indoctrination

American  

[in-dok-truh-ney-shuhn] / ɪnˌdɒk trəˈneɪ ʃən /

noun

1. the act of indoctrinating, or teaching or inculcating a doctrine, principle, or ideology, especially one with a specific point of view.

   religious indoctrination.

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Other Word Forms

• reindoctrination noun

Etymology

Origin of indoctrination

indoctrin(ate) + -ation

Explanation

Indoctrination means teaching someone to accept a set of beliefs without questioning them. Your sister's orientation at her new job might seem more like indoctrination if she comes home robotically reciting her corporate employee handbook. Indoctrination often refers to religious ideas, when you're talking about a religious environment that doesn't let you question or criticize those beliefs. The Latin word for "teach," doctrina is the root of indoctrinate, and originally that's just what it meant. By the 1830s it came to mean the act of forcing ideas and opinions on someone who isn't allowed to question them.

Example Sentences

But the judges ruled RE was not taught in "an objective, critical, and pluralistic manner," and that could amount to "indoctrination".

From BBC • Jan. 28, 2026

The military had four major departments overseeing operations, arms procurement, logistics and indoctrination, and seven major “military regions,” each operating like independent fiefs.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 28, 2026

The discomfort may not necessarily seek to compel indoctrination, but it does erase the existence of lives, truths, and histories some would rather forget or disappear.

From Slate • Apr. 23, 2025

But these steps may only be delaying the inevitable: Many North Koreans don’t buy the Kim regime’s indoctrination, which risibly portrays North Korea as being a “utopia surrounded by a hellish outside world.”

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 19, 2024

He had been my teacher during my period of indoctrination and now I realized that I shouldn't have come.

From "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison

Related Words

• persuasion