dormitive virtue love

dormitive virtue

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun idiomatic, rhetoric, logic, linguistics A type of tautology in which an item is being explained in terms of the item itself, only put in different (usually more abstract) words.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

A calque translation of Latin, virtus dormitiva, coined by Molière in The Imaginary Invalid. In the play, he lampoons a group of physicians providing an explanation in macaronic Latin of the sleep-inducing properties of opium as stemming from its "virtus dormitiva".

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