Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- To address with a question; especially, to question formally or publicly; demand an answer or explanation from: used originally in connection with French legislative proceedings: as, the ministry were interpellated with regard to their intentions.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To question imperatively, as a minister, or other executive officer, in explanation of his conduct; -- generally on the part of a legislative body.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb obsolete To
interrupt (someone) so as to inform or question (that person about something). - verb philosophy To address (a person) in a way that presupposes a particular identification of them; to
give (a person) anidentity (which may or may not be accurate). - verb transitive To
question (someone)formally concerningofficial orgovernmental policy orbusiness .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb question formally about policy or government business
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Are You There God, It's Me Margaret engaged in hegemonic discourse that disrupted narratives of power; I gave the benefit of the doubt to the dumbass who thought "interpellate" and "interpolate" were synonyms; I gritted my teeth when an author dismissed the gendered meaning of "avuncular" as "deriv [ing] only from its etymology."
xoom 2009
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"interpellate" the PRIME MINISTER regarding his recent speech in
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 153, November 21, 1917 Various
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We are in our house, and as you walk the commons, we speak to you, interpellate you, and you recognize in our call the voice you choose to follow.
We Don’t Know Who You Are Daniel Lukes 2012
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The resulting spectacle of oppression is profound: students communicate symbolically the intellectual and cultural violence of the state's abdication of education, and the authorities, ridiculously, actually interpellate themselves.
Sarah Amsler: Creative Militancy, Militant Creativity and the New British Student Movement Sarah Amsler 2010
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The resulting spectacle of oppression is profound: students communicate symbolically the intellectual and cultural violence of the state's abdication of education, and the authorities, ridiculously, actually interpellate themselves.
Sarah Amsler: Creative Militancy, Militant Creativity and the New British Student Movement Sarah Amsler 2010
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This is, in effect, how British literature was utilized in India and elsewhere to interpellate Indian subjects with a uniquely British sensibility, and thus produce compliant colonial subjects under the ruse of spreading civilization.
The Ruins of Empire: Nationalism, Art, and Empire in Hemans's Modern Greece 2006
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Such princes fear nothing, and are never abashed; they are on familiar terms with the audience, and interpellate the bystanders, which was a sure cause of merriment, but not of good order.
A Literary History of the English People From the Origins to the Renaissance Jean Jules Jusserand
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I was about condescendingly to interpellate him in my best
The Lock and Key Library Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English Egerton Castle 1889
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And, while the little, laughing girls questioned them, in that mocking tone which girls, when they are in a troupe, assume ordinarily to interpellate boys, these smiled, and each one struck his chest which gave a metallic sound.
Ramuntcho Pierre Loti 1886
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"Let Granet interpellate us when he pleases -- In eight days, to-morrow, yes, to-day even, I am ready!"
His Excellency the Minister Jules Claretie 1876
mollusque commented on the word interpellate
One dire detail: in rapid Russian speech longish name-and-patronymic combinations undergo familiar slurrings: thus "Pavel Pavlovich," Paul, son of Paul, when casually interpellated is made to sound like "Pahlpahlych" and the hardly utterable, tapeworm-long "Vladimir Vladimirovich" becomes colloquialy similar to "Vadim Vadimych."
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 249
June 13, 2009
cryptofascistbbq commented on the word interpellate
From wikipedia:
Interpellation is a concept of Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser to describe the process by which ideology addresses the (abstract) pre-ideological individual thus effectively producing him or her as subject proper. Henceforth, Althusser goes against the classical definition of the subject as cause and substance: in other words, the situation always precedes the (individual or collective) subject, which precisely as subject is "always-already interpellated." Althusser's argument here strongly draws from Jacques Lacan's concept of the Mirror stage and reveals obvious parallels with the work of his former student Michel Foucault in its antihumanist insistence on the secondary status of the subject as mere effect of social relations and not vice versa. Interpellation specifically involves the moment and process of recognition of interaction with the ideology at hand.
June 23, 2009
sionnach commented on the word interpellate
I think it's fair to say that I have no idea of what this word really means.
July 7, 2009
reesetee commented on the word interpellate
I'd like to think of it as an underlayer of fox fur. ;-)
July 7, 2009
qms commented on the word interpellate
Humpty Dumpty would approve of interpellate. It seems able to mean whatever you want it to mean. Even better, pronunciation is apparently a matter of personal preference - perhaps because nobody has ever heard the word spoken. Absent the risk of comprehension or contradiction, utter it with authority.
A flexible word, interpellate;
The meanings quite proliferate.
Pronounce as you please
With confident ease
And wield it to intimidate.
February 17, 2015