didactic

American  

[dahy-dak-tik] / daɪˈdæk tɪk /

Also didactical

adjective

1. intended for instruction; instructive.

   didactic poetry.

2. inclined to teach or lecture others too much.

   a boring, didactic speaker.

   Synonyms:

   pedagogical, donnish, preachy, pedantic

3. teaching or intending to teach a moral lesson.

4. (used with a singular verb) didactics, the art or science of teaching.

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didactic British  

/ dɪˈdæktɪk /

adjective

1. intended to instruct, esp excessively

2. morally instructive; improving

3. (of works of art or literature) containing a political or moral message to which aesthetic considerations are subordinated

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Other Word Forms

• didactically adverb
• didacticism noun
• nondidactic adjective
• nondidactically adverb
• undidactic adjective

Etymology

Origin of didactic

First recorded in 1635–45; from Greek didaktikós “apt at teaching, instructive,” from didakt(ós) “that may be taught, teachable” (from didáskein “to teach”) + -ikos -ic

Explanation

When people are didactic, they're teaching or instructing. This word is often used negatively for when someone is acting too much like a teacher. When you're didactic, you're trying to teach something. Just about everything teachers do is didactic: the same is true of coaches and mentors. Didactic is often used in a negative way. If you heard that a movie is overly didactic, that's probably not good. Most people want to see a story and be entertained when going to the movies, and if it feels like the movie is just telling you what to think, that's didactic in a bad way.

Example Sentences

“The Drama” has proven controversial and has been criticized as too thinly written by some viewers and critics who want answers and meaning laid out in legible, didactic lessons built into the script.

From Salon • Apr. 9, 2026

Davis’ book makes sense of all this without being overly didactic.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 13, 2026

Other somewhat more didactic or exposition-heavy passages include a professor giving a brief lecture about the persistent and pernicious British class system.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 2, 2025

The star went on to admit that during that period of time she "might have got a little didactic about it."

From BBC • Apr. 24, 2025

Always didactic, he went into a learned exposition of the diabolical properties of cinnabar, but Úrsula paid no attention to him, although she took the children off to pray.

From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez