(n.) A word which was made the criterion by which to distinguish the Ephraimites from the Gileadites. The Ephraimites, not being able to pronounce sh, called the word sibboleth. See Judges xii.
(n.) Also in an extended sense.
(n.) Hence, the criterion, test, or watchword of a party; a party cry or pet phrase.
Example Sentences:
(1) If the former foreign secretary does narrowly win after all, he will take over a party where the ground has shifted decisively against New Labour shibboleths, where his rivals now command powerful constituencies and where the battle over cuts will shape the political agenda.
(2) One camp might allege Islamophobia while the other makes reference to extremism and radicalisation, and claims that the great shibboleths of diversity and multiculturalism excuse no end of sins.
(3) They make a shibboleth of a single tax rate and allow symbolism to trump real reform.
(4) Trump ends California swing marked by bold remarks, criticism and violence Read more “So tonight,” he said, “to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support.” Nixon had created a cultural shibboleth: the silent majority , the conservative masses, appalled at the cultural and political advances of the 1960s, ready to reel them back in.
(5) But as one New Labour shibboleth after another, from nationalisation to higher taxes on the rich, has fallen under the pressure of the crisis, it has certainly underlined the price of the corporate embrace that has been its lodestar from its inception (and the Conservatives', naturally, long before that).
(6) Labour, he says, is in danger of turning high marginal tax rates, a large state, and "snapshots of income inequality" into shibboleths.
(7) The shibboleths would indeed be disregarded and, by 2002, the not much better Network Rail had replaced Railtrack.
(8) Huhne was making enemies by his willingness to challenge Tory shibboleths in public and in his confident, abrasive way.
(9) Essentially, her committee was saying, by 1998, what a subsequent transport minister, Stephen Byers, would be admitting in 2001, that Railtrack was no good, that partial renationalisation at least was a very strong option and that shibboleths should be disregarded.
(10) They will also have to work out where they sit in a new political system that will take shape free of no end of shibboleths – not least the 20th-century assumption that the centre-left should be led by Labour.
(11) But what he called "the fight against bad English" is too often understood, thanks to the perversities of his own example, as a philistine and joyless campaign in favour of that shibboleth of dull pedants "plain English".
(12) He dumped liberal shibboleths to cast himself as pro-business and -trade, tough on crime and welfare.
(13) Entire papers, conferences, consultancies and even startup businesses, can be spun out of those shibboleths.
(14) Yet inegalitarian shibboleths such as balanced budgets and corporate tax relief will be retained.
(15) It is a classic example of old progressive myopia, making a shibboleth of one aspect of the tax system rather than looking at it in the round.
(16) Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Shibboleth’, by Colombian artist Doris Salcedo.
(17) It will be stripped of "liberal shibboleths" – all that namby-pamby stuff about children expressing their creativity, presumably – in favour of no-nonsense drilling in literacy and numeracy, lots of sport and "martial values" of self-discipline and respect.
(18) For reasons that remain obscure the rejection of climate science has become a shibboleth for rightwing culture warriors, whose views drive not only Abbott himself, but the majority of his backbench.
(19) America Magazine and the Tablet : America Magazine, published by the Catholic Jesuit order, has already begun reporting on moves to resist immigration raids, and regularly features opinion contrasting the teachings of Pope Francis with the shibboleths of American conservatism.
(20) A mere tax "shibboleth", he said, at a time when real reform would focus on taxing unearned wealth and pollution.
Truism
Definition:
(n.) An undoubted or self-evident truth; a statement which is pliantly true; a proposition needing no proof or argument; -- opposed to falsism.
Example Sentences:
(1) In one respect all that is left from Piaget's approach for psychotherapy generally is the truism that therapy fosters differentiation and integration.
(2) I was into a kind of heavy philosophy thing when I was 16 years old, and I wanted a truism about cutting through the lies and all that.
(3) It is a truism that politicians have to govern in prose and campaign in poetry.
(4) The argument turns, first, on the truism that a physician has no obligation to commit a battery, or unauthorized touching, and, second, on the thesis that a patient necessarily cannot consent to something that is unknown to him.
(5) It is a truism that the basis for safe management is careful co-operation between clinicians and pathologists who have all the relevant facts and who know and trust one another's judgement.
(6) That and the “truisms” that “we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem” and “you can’t cut taxes by raising them”.
(7) It's a very strange film, since it reverses the usual truism that "you had to be there".
(8) It became a truism that more people voted on premium rate lines for reality show contestants than in general elections – although the truism was untrue, because many of these phone votes were made up of multiple calls by the same people.
(9) Over the past few years of recession and regression, it has become a trite truism of European politics that you can't go wrong going to the right.
(10) But it was wrong with such intelligence, and such an abundance of seriousness and knowledge, that even those who disagreed preferred its freshly minted arguments on the wrong side to a routine repetition of truisms on their own.” David Astor: A Life in Print by Jeremy Lewis will be published by Jonathan Cape on 3 March, £25.
(11) The mantra of Margarita Simonyan, who heads RT, is: “There is no such thing as objective reporting.” This may be true, but RT’s mission is to push the truism to its breaking point.
(12) It is a truism of the "Arab spring" and other periods of sudden change in repressive political systems that the most dangerous moments are those when the regime starts meeting its critics' demands.
(13) It is now a truism that men never talk to each other about things that matter.
(14) There are two truisms about education policy which researchers need to bear in mind.
(15) It is becoming a truism that the world increasingly resembles the world of 1914.
(16) Johnson’s talk of a Sunni-Shia political divide that abuses Islam, and an absence of enlightened regional leaders willing to overcome it, is another truism.
(17) All projects throughout history have always been delivered within the final budget – that is a truism.
(18) One swipe of Wayne Rooney’s right foot altered everything and for 25 minutes after the final whistle they revelled in the truism that only the result matters when the Premier League’s fallen heavyweights collide.
(19) While it is a truism that nursing homes should reflect a homelike setting, relatively few nursing homes have been successful in avoiding a hospital-like image.
(20) A clinical and roentgenographic analysis of 13 patients with pathologically proved xanthogranulomatous pyelonephritis (X-P) has demonstrated that many previously accepted truisms associated with this disease may not be valid.