Dictionary

Socratize en · VERB

Etymology

From Socrates + -ize.

Meanings

1. To be like Socrates.
   • In this case the principle fails because there is (to put the anti-Fregean's case in Fregean terms) nothing that does not Socratize if and only if wisdom does Socratize. 2008, Richard Gaskin, The Unity of the Proposition, page 271:
   • ...they started up a-stare At the half-helot captain and his crew —Spartans, "men used to let their hair grow long, To fast, be dirty, and just — Socratize " — Whose word was "Trample on Themistokles!" 1887, Robert Browning, Red Cotton Night-cap Country: Aristophanes' Apology:
2. To be like Socrates. ▸ To explore an idea by probing questions.
   • It just so happens that coffeehouses are particularly good places to Socratize. 2011, Coffee - Philosophy for Everyone: Grounds for Debate, page 75:
   • Socrates is satisfied to discuss with good sense, and is willing to examine, and to appeal to reason rather than to authority.” Then he asks himself if he cannot “Socratize” too, and the revolutionary standard is unfurled. 1884, Christiana Bridge, History of French Literature, page 110:
   • Everyone was unwinding after the weekly tensions of our final year—from the professor before us (who would Socratize in a bantering, conversational tone with teenagers) to the gang at the back of the room, half-heartedly following the dialogued chain of ideas in this majeutical formulation. 2006, Georges Anglade, Haitian laughter, page 165:
   • It is the teacher's duty to assign tasks to warn and to chastise; one favorite Pestalozzian method was to "Socratize," or, catechizing for cultivation of intellect and spiritual exercise. 1917, Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, Teachers' Problems and how to Solve Them:
   • It is impossible to Socratize five-hundred students all at once. 1952, Jacob Gould Schurman, James Edwin Creighton, Frank Thilly, The Philosophical Review - Volume 61, page 129:
3. (rare) To be like Socrates. ▸ To sodomize.
   • Get real man, I know / quality when I see it, each / sixpack brings you closer to / divinity. Laid back now that / I’m 36 & middle-aged, even so / I like to Socratize with / youngmen. 1981, Dennis Kelly, “Albert”, in Size Queen and Other Poems, San Francisco, CA: Gay Sunshine Press, →ISBN, page 11:
   • After he had done considerable sucking, I took up another whip, laid on a second time and socratized him again, he knelt as before and returned to his licking, and so it went, each of us doing his part at least fifteen times over. 1966 [1785], Marquis de Sade, translated by Austryn Wainhouse and Richard Seaver, The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings, page 448:
   • Turning both side ways, our genitals in a heap, the sight overwhelmed me, yet lust, a desire to Socratize him – as nearly as I can define my sensations – scarcely entered into the confused and lustful combinations, caused by my clasping him as if he were a woman. c. 1888, “Walter”, My Secret Life; republished as My Secret Life, volume 3, 1995, →ISBN, page 283:

Forms

Deriveds

Socratizer