Apophthegm (Noun)
Meaning
A short pithy instructive saying.
Classification
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents.
Examples
- An early advocate of female education, the 19th-century author is still celebrated for her memorable apophthegm that learning was "the natural possession of all who live in this age."
- Many wisdom texts across the centuries open with apophthegms of deep reflection.
- Sociologist Lewis Coser regarded Emerson as "an important heir of that moral philosophy for which aphorism is apophthegm".
- That cryptic remark might just prove a very revealing apophthegm as well.
- Epitaph and apophthegm also use "two-statement intertexture".