Word Direct Answers

What does "discipline" mean?

Discipline: Training to act in accordance with established rules; accustoming to systematic and regular action; drill. Their wildness lose, and, quitting nature's part, Obey the rules and discipline of art. Dryden.

Additional senses

  1. 2.Subjection to rule; submissiveness to order and control; habit of obedience. The most perfect, who have their passions in the best discipline, are yet obliged to be constantly on their guard. Rogers.
  2. 3.Severe training, corrective of faults; instruction by means of misfortune, suffering, punishment, etc. A sharp discipline of half a century had sufficed to educate Macaulay.
  3. 4.Correction; chastisement; punishment inflicted by way of correction and training. Giving her the discipline of the strap. Addison.
  4. 5.The subject matter of instruction; a branch of knowledge. Bp. Wilkins.
  5. 6.(Eccl.) The enforcement of methods of correction against one guilty of ecclesiastical offenses; reformatory or penal action toward a church member.
  6. 7.(R. C. Ch.) Self- inflicted and voluntary corporal punishment, as penance, or otherwise; specifically, a penitential scourge.
  7. 8.(Eccl.) A system of essential rules and duties; as, the Romish or Anglican discipline.
  8. 9.To educate; to develop by instruction and exercise; to train.
  9. 10.To accustom to regular and systematic action; to bring under control so as to act systematically; to train to act together under orders; to teach subordination to; to form a habit of obedience in; to drill. Ill armed, and worse disciplined. Clarendon. His mind . . . imperfectly disciplined by nature. Macaulay.
  10. 11.To improve by corrective and penal methods; to chastise; to correct. Has he disciplined Aufidius soundly Shak.
  11. 12.To inflict ecclesiastical censures and penalties upon.

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