ideology

Definition

Doctrine, philosophy, body of beliefs or principles belonging to an individual or group.

Etymology

Borrowed from French idéologie, from idéo- + -logie (equivalent to English ideo- + -logy). Cognate with, but not derived from, idea. Coined 1796 by Antoine Destutt de Tracy. Modern sense of “doctrine” attributed to use of related idéologue (“ideologue”) by Napoleon Bonaparte as a term of abuse towards political opponents in early 1800s.

Example Sentences

• "A dictatorship bans things, that do not conform to its ideology, to secure its reign."
• "This article examines how these three scholars use the term "Occitan" and ideologies of Occitanism to characterize southern France, and how such ideologies reflect the intellectual traditions in which they write."
• "What is unbearable, in fact, is the feeling, 13 years after 9/11, that America has been chasing its tail; that, in some whack-a-mole horror show, the quashing of a jihadi enclave here only spurs the sprouting of another there; that the ideology of Al Qaeda is still reverberating through a blocked Arab world whose Sunni-Shia balance (insofar as that went) was upended by the American invasion of Iraq."