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orthodox

adjectiveattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈɔːθədɒks//
  • United States//ˈɔɹθədɑks//

Conforming to the accepted, established, or traditional doctrines of a given faith, religion, or ideology.

adjective

  1. 1

    Conforming to the accepted, established, or traditional doctrines of a given faith, religion, or ideology.

    Five important modifications were made by the Pietists to the orthodox doctrine of justification, each corresponding to a distinctive aspect of the movement's agenda.

    ‘These speakers are academics who have specialised in Islamic sciences and are well respected in scholarly circles. It is grossly unjust to suggest that they belong to some fringe ideology rather than orthodox Islam.’

  2. 2

    Adhering to whatever is customary, traditional, or generally accepted.

    She tattled on: first to one, then to the other—then to all, till she had tattled herself out of breath;—and then the orthodox half hour had expired, and the bell was rung, and the carriage ordered, and Mrs. Hare rose to depart.

    Not only the quack cures of the past but also many forms of treatment given with the best will and intentions in the world by the best and most orthodox doctors of the time seem strange to us today.

  3. 3

    Of the eastern churches, Eastern Orthodox.

  4. 4

    Of a branch of Judaism.

  5. 5

    Of pollen, seed, or spores: viable for a long time; viable when dried to low moisture content.

Etymology

From Late Middle English orthodoxe, from Middle French orthodoxe and its etymon Late Latin orthodoxus, from Ancient Greek ὀρθόδοξος (orthódoxos), from ὀρθός (orthós, “straight”) + δόξα (dóxa, “opinion”). Displaced native Old English wuldorlīċ.

Forms

comparative
more orthodox
superlative
most orthodox
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).