Word of the Day

: July 26, 2023

stoic

adjective STOH-ik

What It Means

Stoic describes someone who shows very little emotion especially in response to a painful or distressing situation.

// He remained stoic even as his manager reprimanded him in front of his colleagues.

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stoic in Context

“[Basketball player, Nikola] Jokic remained stoic and straight-faced throughout most of the postgame celebration, taking care to shake hands with every Heat player before attending the trophy presentation. Afterward, he was noncommittal about attending the Nuggets’ championship parade on Thursday, saying that he ‘needs to get home’ to Serbia as soon as possible.” — Ben Golliver, The Washington Post, 13 June 2023

Did You Know?

The familiar phrase “keep calm and carry on” would have made a lot of sense to the philosopher Zeno of Citium, born in Cyprus in the 4th century B.C.E. As a young man, Zeno traveled to Athens and studied with the important philosophers of the day, among them two influential Cynics. He eventually arrived at his own philosophy and began teaching at a public hall called the Stoa Poikile. Zeno's philosophy, Stoicism, took its name from the hall where he taught; it preached self-control, fortitude, and justice, and that passion was the cause of all evil. By the 14th century, English speakers had adopted the noun stoic as a general term for anyone able to face adversity calmly and without excess emotion, and by the 15th century, stoic was being used as an adjective to describe that same kind of person.