propaganda
/ˌpɹɑpəˈɡændə/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.17 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
4
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Agitation, publicity, public communication aimed at influencing an audience and furthering an agenda.
Uncountable
noun
Agitation, publicity, public communication aimed at influencing an audience and furthering an agenda.
Uncountable
noun
Such communication specifically when it is biased, misleading, or provoking mainly emotional responses.
Derogatory; Uncountable
noun
Example Sentences
- "Near-synonym: public diplomacy (sometimes asserted to be synonymous)"
- "Despite being biased and often untrue, propaganda material can be useful in OSINT analysis."
- "Meanwhile, with something like twenty-five million new mouths bawling for food every year, the supply problem became steadily worse, and after years of ineffective propaganda a couple of atrocious harvests had at last made the people aware of its urgency."
- "They established a government propaganda commission, called the Creel Commission, which succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, war-mongering population which wanted to destroy everything German, tear the Germans limb from limb, go to war and save the world."
- "In this metropolis that had a prewar population of almost a million, but where the city center now feels like an Orwellian ghost town of propaganda posters and armed patrols, perhaps no one feels more alone than those who still harbor pro-Ukrainian sentiments."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *per-der.? Proto-Indo-European *per-der.? Proto-Indo-European *pér Proto-Indo-European *-o Proto-Indo-European *pró Proto-Indo-European *pro- Proto-Italic *pro- Latin prō̆- Proto-Indo-European *peh₂ǵ- Latin prōpāgō Latin prōpāgandus New Latin prōpāgandader. English propaganda From New Latin prōpāganda, short for Congregātiō dē Prōpāgandā Fidē (“a committee of cardinals established in 1622 by Gregory XV to supervise foreign missions”, literally “congregation for propagating the faith”), and properly the ablative feminine gerundive of Latin prōpāgō (“propagate”). Once the word had been detached from the phrase from which it originated, it could be reinterpreted as a neuter plural gerundive, meaning "things to be propagated"; compare agenda. Modern political sense dates from World War I, not originally pejorative.
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: prōpāganda, prōpāgō
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˌpɹɑpəˈɡændə/
- British English: /ˌpɹɒpəˈɡændə/