indoctrinate

Word family

• indoctrination
  nounC1
• indoctrinator
  nounC2
• indoctrinated
  adjectiveC1

Synonym discussion

Sense: verb/1

All four words describe imposing beliefs on others, but they differ in intensity and scope. Indoctrinate is the most neutral of the four (though still negative), focusing on the repeated teaching of a specific set of beliefs within an institutional setting such as a school, cult, or political regime. Brainwash is far stronger and implies a total erasure of the person's prior beliefs through intense psychological pressure or coercion — it is more dramatic and less common in formal writing. Propagandize shifts the focus from the individual to the mass audience: a government propagandizes through media campaigns rather than through one-on-one instruction. Program suggests a mechanical, almost robotic conditioning, as if the target's mind were being coded. In everyday use, indoctrinate is the safest choice for institutional influence that discourages questioning, while brainwash is reserved for extreme manipulation.

Common collocations

Etymology

Indoctrinate comes from Latin 'in-' (into) + 'docere' (to teach) + the past-participle suffix '-atus'. It entered English in the early 1600s meaning simply 'to teach or instruct'. By the 1800s the word had developed its modern negative sense of forcing someone to accept a set of beliefs uncritically, possibly because it was used to describe the methods of political and religious groups that tolerated no dissent.