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dormitive virtue

noun

Etymology

A calque translation of Latin, virtus dormitiva, coined by Molière in The Imaginary Invalid. In the play, he lampoons a group of physicians providing an explanation in macaronic Latin of the sleep-inducing properties of opium as stemming from its "virtus dormitiva".

  1. derived from of the sleep-inducing properties of opium as stemming from its "virtus dormitiva"

Definitions

  1. A type of tautology in which an item is explained in terms of the item itself, only put…

    A type of tautology in which an item is explained in terms of the item itself, only put in different (usually more abstract) words.

    • The inevitable next suggestion -— that aesthetic experience is distinguished not by pleasure at all but by a special aesthetic emotion can be dropped on the waste-pile of "dormitive virtue” explanations
    • Solidity now has all the defects of a dormitive virtue, obscurity, unobservability, something-we-know-notwhattery — and none of the advantages of a dormitive virtue
    • Because (1) is postulated and at the same time used as a covering law, the putative explanations are vacuous in the sense in which explanatory appeals to dormitive virtue are.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for dormitive virtue. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA