What does "indoctrinate" mean?

To teach (a person) with a biased, one-sided or uncritical ideology; to brainwash.

What is a synonym for "indoctrinate"?

Common synonyms include: alienate, beat into, brainwash, catechize, condition, corrupt.

Indoctrinate

verb

verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb

1
To teach (a person) with a biased, one-sided or uncritical ideology; to brainwash.
2
teach doctrines to; teach uncritically wordnet
3
To teach and instill (something, to a person) in a biased, one-sided way.
"[...] it was beyond their hope to indoctrinate Marxism-Leninism-Mao's "thought" into the mind of young generation. The young generation does not care about Communism."
4
To teach; to instruct. obsolete

Synonyms

All synonyms

alienate beat into brainwash catechize condition corrupt

Example

More examples

"[...] it was beyond their hope to indoctrinate Marxism-Leninism-Mao's "thought" into the mind of young generation. The young generation does not care about Communism."

Etymology

From in- + doctrine + -ate (verb-forming suffix). Compare French endoctriner.

Related phrases

one sided

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.