Pragmatic vs Didactic - What's the difference?
pragmatic | didactic |
Practical, concerned with making decisions and actions that are useful in practice, not just theory.
* The sturdy furniture in the student lounge was pragmatic , but unattractive.
*
philosophical; dealing with causes, reasons, and effects, rather than with details and circumstances; said of literature.
* Sir W. Hamilton
* M. Arnold
Instructive or intended to teach or demonstrate, especially with regard to morality. (I.e., didactic poetry)
* Macaulay
Excessively moralizing.
(medicine) Teaching from textbooks rather than laboratory demonstration and clinical application.
As adjectives the difference between pragmatic and didactic
is that pragmatic is practical, concerned with making decisions and actions that are useful in practice, not just theory while didactic is instructive or intended to teach or demonstrate, especially with regard to morality. (I.e., didactic poetry.As a noun didactic is
a treatise on teaching or education.pragmatic
English
Alternative forms
* pragmatick (archaic) * pragmatique (obsolete)Adjective
(en adjective)- Nor indeed are these restrictions pragmatic'' in nature: i.e. the ill-formedness of the ''heed''-sentences in (60) is entirely different in kind from the oddity of sentences like:
(61) !That man will eat any car which thinks he?s stupid
which is purely ''pragmatic (i.e. lies in the fact that (61) describes the kind of bizarre situation which just doesn?t happen in the world we are familiar with, where cars don?t think, and people don?t eat cars).
- Pragmatic history.
- Pragmatic poetry.
Synonyms
* (practical) down-to-earth, functional, practical, utilitarian, realisticAntonyms
* idealisticDerived terms
* pragma * pragmatically * pragmaticism * pragmaticsExternal links
* *didactic
English
Alternative forms
* didactick (obsolete)Adjective
(en adjective)- The finest didactic poem in any language.
