What's the difference between adage and dictum?

Adage


Definition:

  • (n.) An old saying, which has obtained credit by long use; a proverb.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) One of the great cautionary adages of our culture is: "Be careful what you wish for; you might just get it."
  • (2) What does the slung-about, bounced-around adage that "Politics is show-business for ugly people" actually mean?
  • (3) Certainly, the galvanising call for submissions brings to mind that inclusive Varsovian adage: “The entire nation builds its capital.” For Warsaw’s reconstruction, though, it was the work of a single artist that provided the crucial blueprint.
  • (4) It reminds me of the old adage that we teach people how to treat us.
  • (5) Depending on your tastes, that verdict might either bring to mind Marx’s adage about history being repeated first as tragedy then farce, or the immortal words of Jay Gatsby: “Can’t repeat the past?
  • (6) The old adage, "You are what you eat," is not always reliable, as demonstrated in this mixed-longitudinal study of men that began in 1969.
  • (7) Working with researchers at the University of Surrey and being exposed to the wealth of evidence out there, it is clear to me that the old adage "rest is best" no longer applies.
  • (8) It has some commentators repeating an old adage about newspapers, repeated by Bill Clinton when he was president: "Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel."
  • (9) You can only beat what’s put in front of you, as the old adage goes … but the Potters’ recent run of fixtures could scarcely have been kinder: Bournemouth are the only side inside the top 10 they have played in over two months and they beat Mark Hughes’s men.
  • (10) At the time I thought it was a clever inversion of an old adage, referring to Labour's 18 years in opposition.
  • (11) As in Aesop's adage, the ego ideal is at the source of the best and the worst of things.
  • (12) The three dimensional display capabilities of the Adage AGT-30 are used to present the reconstructed structures.
  • (13) As the African adage says, “a man must be like a flowering pole, he must grow wherever he is planted”.
  • (14) Diane Abbott is Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington Simon Danczuk Simon Danczuk: 'Voters want a party they can trust on immigration' There's an old adage in politics that if you don't think you can win an argument, be sure to change the subject.
  • (15) Two-and-a-half years on, and regulators have lived up to the adage that those who don't learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them.
  • (16) That’s why the government guidelines don’t say, ‘Don’t drink’; they say, ‘OK drink, but only modestly.’ It’s like a little of what doesn’t kill you cures you.” This adage also applies in an unexpected place – to broccoli, the luvvie of the high-street “superfood” detox salad.
  • (17) Don’t sterilise everything that comes into contact with your child’s mouth, within reason.” In fact, the one piece of advice Arrieta offers mothers is to forget the adage “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” “One thing I don’t do any more – and wish others would stop – is carrying a hand sanitiser gel.
  • (18) Caraiva, Bahia Steven Chew, contributing editor Conde Nast Traveller There's an adage with remote Brazilian beaches: first go the hippies, then the yachties, then the French ... Caraiva is still at the happy-hippy stage of discovery and even then only for a brief period in the summer.
  • (19) The adage "do no harm" should be kept in mind in the counseling, diagnosis, and treatment of HIV-infected individuals.
  • (20) Baseball fans are familiar with the old adage “pitching wins championships”.

Dictum


Definition:

  • (n.) An authoritative statement; a dogmatic saying; an apothegm.
  • (n.) A judicial opinion expressed by judges on points that do not necessarily arise in the case, and are not involved in it.
  • (n.) The report of a judgment made by one of the judges who has given it.
  • (n.) An arbitrament or award.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Jeremy Corbyn could learn a lot from Ken Livingstone | Hugh Muir Read more High-minded commentators will say that self-respect – as well as Burke’s dictum that MPs are more than delegates – should be enough to make members under pressure assert their independence.
  • (2) For many years, surgical dictum stated abdominal fistulas should be treated by means of surgical excision.
  • (3) The first practice reflects the dictum of comorbidity.
  • (4) It also discusses how an early notion of ulcer formation (e.g., the Schwarz dictum of "no acid, no ulcer," first published in 1910) became the slogan by which ulcer disease was understood and from which therapy took its cue.
  • (5) This dictum is highlighted in infants with biliary atresia, in whom the progressive sclerosing process results in complete obliteration of patent but microscopic hilar biliary structures by 4 months of age.
  • (6) Yet, for all of the current knowledge of nutrient effects on immunity, the words of Dr R.K. Chandra hold sterling advice, "Moderation is a good dictum in biology and medicine, and it applies equally to nutritional immunology."
  • (7) Both the dictum "no acid-no ulcer" and the coroliary "normal healing-no ulcer" seems to be valid.
  • (8) The old dictum 'no acid--no ulcer' is no longer a sufficient explanation of the pathogenesis of ulcer disease.
  • (9) His trajectory these last few months has conformed to that dictum for radical reformers generally attributed to Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” He scraped on to the ballot with seconds to spare with the help of MPs who didn’t support him but wanted to ensure the voice of the Labour left could at least be heard – a tokenistic gesture to demonstrate the party still had roots even if they weren’t showing.
  • (10) The clinician should discard the dictum that malignant lymphoma is a painless process and should not neglect the consideration of malignant lymphoma because of the presence of pain.
  • (11) But most of us accept the argument that the carnage of the Somme was in part due to the revisionist historical dictum that our troops were lions led by donkeys – that the flower of British youth died in the mud of Flanders and the Somme, and in the seas off Jutland, because of leadership issues that make RBS and G4S seem beacons of managerial competence.
  • (12) But taking on board my newest dictum – that all experiences divide into a) Super Amazing Great Times or b) Awful Bad Times That Will Later Make Great Anecdotes – I'm still very happy that I had my two years of teenage rumpeteering.
  • (13) Yet despite the veneer of novelty, Lampedusa's dictum from his novel The Leopard still sums up Italy's predicament: "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change."
  • (14) Surrogate mothering and surrogate gestational mothering force us to redefine the age old dictum mater certa est and can render the child a helpless pawn in parental, emotional, and legal strife.
  • (15) As clinicians, we must always remember the dictum, "All that wheezes is not asthma."
  • (16) Chief constables were operationally independent, answering - in Lord Denning's famous dictum - only to the law.
  • (17) Osborne is not expecting to get a good press, but is comforting himself with the old Ken Clarke dictum that the worst budgets are those that get the best headlines the following day.
  • (18) Although bone removal is universally recommended by the otolaryngologic proponents of ablative procedures in the frontal sinus, no comprehensive explanation has been proffered to justify this dictum.
  • (19) You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose.” Mario Cuomo’s famous dictum is something to bear in mind when you hear a Conservative replicant repeat the phrase “strong and stable” for the 37th time that day.
  • (20) While I do not hold with the Nazi theorists that science is a direct reflection of the racial or national spirit (50), neither do I accept Chekhov's dictum (51) that "there is no national science just as there is no national multiplication table.