propagandum

English

Etymology

From Latin prōpāgandum, neuter of prōpāgandus (“which is to be propagated”). Reinterpretation of the form propaganda as a plural, by analogy with e.g. memorandum.

Noun

propagandum (plural propaganda) (now rare)

1. An idea or topic spread with the goal of convincing or influencing large numbers of people, regardless of its actual validity.
   • 1864 June 24, Aug[ustus] C. L. Arnold, “The Festival of St. John the Baptist, and its Significance”, in Robert McMurdy, editor, The National Freemason, volume II, number 3, Washington, D.C., published 1864 August, page 39, column 3:

     From this point of view, as a propagandum of political freedom, Freemasonry is worthy of a profound study, and also entitled to the gratitude and reverence of all good and benevolent men. It has contributed largely to the social improvement of our race, and to the establishment of civil liberty.

   • 1894 June, “Coxeyism and the Interest Question”, in George Gunton, editor, The Social Economist, volume VI, number 6, New York, N.Y.: […], page 346:

     The two per cent theory as to interest, to be effected by an interconvertible bond, which has been taken up and made a propagandum by the Farmers’ Alliance and a platform by the Populists, was originated by one Kellogg, the author of a book entitled “A New Economic System,” which appeared probably as early as 1858.

   • 1898, The Christian Advocate, volume 73, page 10, column 2:

     In State schools religion is permitted and sometimes welcomed, but not as a propagandum. It is a guest on good behavior. It must be polite, careful, conservative. Cæsar dictates how aggressive it may be.

   • 1901, Charles Ferguson, “The Axioms of the Affirmative Intellect”, in The Affirmative Intellect: An Account of the Origin and Mission of the American Spirit, New York, N.Y., London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, page 134:

     The Vigor of democratic polity is in democratic religion. So long as the American people would make their citizenship a privilege as against the rest of the world, they will be ridden over roughshod by domestic monopolies. For American citizenship is not a privilege; it is a propagandum.

   • 1902, Geo[rge] B[ishop] Sudworth, “The Origin and Development of Forest Work in U. S.”, in Michigan State Farmers’ Institutes, Winter of 1901-1902 (Institute Bulletin No. 8), Agricultural College, Michigan, page 50:

     In two directions then, material and money, the product of the wood lot is of high importance to the farmer. But in the majority of cases this part of the farm is far less useful than it might easily be made. This is true because the farmer does not study its productive capacity as he does that of his fields and pastures, and hence does not make it yield as freely as he might, with little or no additional labor, if he went about it in the right way. But the farmer has been told this before when forestry here was a propagandum. […] It was easy enough to tell the lumberman that this system was wrong, but the American lumberman is influenced by proof rather than propaganda.

   • 1903 January, J. J., “Psychological Literature”, in J[ames] Mark Baldwin, J[ames] McKeen Cattell, editors, The Psychological Review, volume X, number 1, Lancaster, Pa., New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, […], page 70:

     Undoubtedly the primitive state of the psychology of abnormal mental states at the time of the miraculous discovery and transcription of the ‘golden plates’ of the book of Mormon had something to do with the ease with which such a propagandum was disseminated.

   • 1907, Chester Bailey Fernald, “The Desert of Doubt”, in John Kendry’s Idea, New York, N.Y.: The Outing Publishing Company, page 215:

     What they beheld was not a propagandum: it was John Kendry’s idea of how actually he best might make himself glad that he had lived. If it had been a propagandum, rather than an example; if he had carried it about with him to expound, instead of only to live by, the world from Paulter to Eastwood and from Eastwood to heights far more exalted would have let him pass to his own music, with a gathering procession of proselytes behind.

   • 1907, Quarterly Newsbook of the Municipal University, volume 1, Municipal University Press, page 130:

     The creative intellect is not merely a white still light. It is also a living flame. Intellectual power is passion heated to incandescence. It is an energy and a propagandum. It is government—it is law. Minerva is armed; the university is militant. The symbol of the liberty which it proclaims to the world is a figure of Truth with a flaming light in one hand and in the other a naked sword!

   • 1910, J. C. Pringle, Report by the Rev. J. C. Pringle on the Effects of Employment or Assistance Given to the “Unemployed” since 1886 as a Means of Relieving Distress outside the Poor Law in Scotland (Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress; appendix volume XIX A), London: […] [F]or His Majesty’s Stationery Office, [b]y Wyman and Sons, Limited, […], page 43:

     Overlapping in these efforts between elective bodies, as distress committees virtually are, and private efforts, must depend largely upon the extent to which the activities of the elective body are dominated by politics. The question whether or not a man who has failed to meet his own difficulties is getting assistance to meet them from various sources, to his own civic confusion and detriment, is one of complete indifference when he and his difficulties are merely a means of advancing a party or a propagandum.

   • 1910, I[saac] M[assey] Haldeman, The Signs of the Times, 8th edition, New York, N.Y.: Francis Emory Fitch, Inc., page 310:

     And this resurrection has been followed by an immense and ever increasing vitality, by a propagandum that extends to every kingdom, nation and tongue. Austria is Catholic to the core. Germany is filled with devotees of the church, and her supporters may be counted by the millions. The progress in Protestant England is astounding.

   • 1912, The World’s Legal Philosophies (The Modern Legal Philosophy Series; II), page 278:

     The work of Bebel² (b. 1840), “Die Frau und der Sozialismus,” is a popular scientific work dealing primarily with the social position of woman in the past, present, and future; it is at the same time a propagandum for the socialistic cause.

   • 1916 May, Helen Ten Broeck, “Interviewing a Princess-Playwright”, in The Theatre: Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Dramatic and Musical Art, volume XXIII, New York, N.Y.: The Theatre Magazine Company, […], page 285, column 3:

     “Since social reform,” I ventured, “is so popular an industry among the social elect, I suppose ‘The Fear Market,’ which holds a trenchant brief for the rights of the rich as well as the poor, is intended as a propagandum?”

   • 1919, George B. Thomas, “The Place of Masonry in the Renaissance of Democracy”, in The Builder: A Journal for the Masonic Student, volume V, number 4, page 106, column 1:

     But where shall we draw the line between the legitimate privileges thus guaranteed us by the constitution and their abuse by those who take advantage of such guarantees under which to spread a propagandum or propaganda which if finally effective will overthrow the very constitution itself?

   • 1920, Herbert E[arle] Gaston, “The Nonpartisan League—What It Is”, in The Nonpartisan League, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, pages 4–5:

     Actually, of course, it is apparent that there is a gulf wide and deep between Socialism as it manifests itself in America and the Nonpartisan League. Socialism is a propagandum of protest and a theory of a future state. Admitting the truth of a considerable part of the Socialists’ indictment of our industrial system, the League has proposed orderly, progressive steps to remove the grounds of protest.

   • 1923, Theosophy, volume 11, pages 490 and 493:

     The present day literature of Masonry shows an astonishing practical virility in wholesome directions and, while Masons are strictly forbidden to proselyte, this literature and the general character of Masons is a propagandum for the higher life that must, insensibly as well as sensibly, profoundly and permanently, if slowly, leaven great numbers of minds and ripen them to a just appreciation of True Occultism when the time comes—as come it will in another generation—to “teach and demonstrate” the great Truths that lie behind the ritual and symbolism of Masonry, as behind all things. […] Bolshevism and Communism are forms of Socialism: Socialism in the saddle as distinct from Socialism on foot and in mere propagandum.

   • 1928 February, Burton Rascoe, “Those Who Can, Criticize”, in The Bookman, volume LXVI, number 6, page 672, column 2:

     Consider: he has lived through Victorianism and its reaction, the Yellow Nineties and the Shaw-Wells iconoclasm, the war and the disillusion after war, the neo-Thomist movement, the neo-Catholic revival, the reaction against the materialists of the nineteenth century and the potential anarchy of the theory of relativity, and among all these sweeping winds of doctrine he has kept his interest and his enthusiasm centered upon pure literature which is a product of living and a reflection of experience in life and not a propagandum or a panacea.

   • 1946 May, Joyce Cary, The Moonlight, Carfax edition, London: Michael Joseph, published 1952, page 273:

     But now it might be feared that Iris herself was demanding of changed times things she could not get. She was very bitter, for instance, against all the different dictators. “Really, all this nationalist rubbish gets on one’s nerves,” she would say. “One hardly dares to turn on the wireless, to open a newspaper.” Or, “I don’t mind their murdering each other so much, if it wasn’t for such silly reasons—all these parties and isms and propagandums make me tired.”

   • 2006, David Haig, “The Gene Meme”, in Alan Grafen, Mark Ridley, editors, Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think, Oxford, Oxon: Oxford University Press, published 2007, →ISBN, section “The Selfish Gene”, pages 58–59:

     An item of propaganda, a propagandum, is a device designed by a propagandist to achieve a change in the actions of a receiver. The propagandum has served the purpose of the propagandist if the receiver acts in the desired manner. To achieve this purpose it isn’t necessary that a receiver pass the propagandum on to others. But if there is no chain of transmission, then the propagandum does not qualify as a meme. Its effects are not advantageous to itself, but only to the propagandist. Sometimes a propagandum is designed to be passed from one receiver to another because this increases the propagandum’s efficiency as an agent of mass persuasion.

   • 2020, David Haig, “The “Gene” Meme”, in From Darwin to Derrida: Selfish Genes, Social Selves, and the Meanings of Life, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, →ISBN, page 66:

     An apprentice uses techniques of proven efficacy to design propaganda, and then a propagandum’s success in public persuasion influences whether the apprentice passes on the technique to his own apprentices when he becomes a master. From the perspective of the techniques as memes, propaganda are meme-products that influence a technique’s probability of transmisison, but these items may also function as memes in their own right. A propagandum may be both “memotype” and “phemotype.”

2. A campaign to spread such an idea or topic.
   • 1904, George E[dgar] Vincent, “The Origin of Summer Schools”, in Summer Schools and University Extension (Nicholas Murray Butler, editor, Monographs on Education in the United States; 16), […] the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, page 823:

     Furthermore, groups of people with common interests, schools of thought, societies for promoting reform and other organizations have deepened the loyalty of their members and carried on a propagandum by means of summer gatherings. So, too, individual teachers with their assistants have gone to the country to teach languages, music and art.

   • 1907, Mississippi Valley Medical Monthly, volume 27, page 143:

     Concluding, I shall venture to point out that, if our profession should fail to attain and to keep up a reasonable interest in this ultra-important matter, it will be made inevitably a reproach to it. Thus far, fortunately, it has not been made a subject either for a propagandum or for quackery; but the subject has great potentialities for zealots as well as for charlatans.

   • 1908, Minutes and Proceedings of the Five Years Meeting of the Friends in America, page 406:

     The revival movement of forty years ago marks the point in history where Friends, for the second time, became a proselyting body, using the term only in its original and worthy sense, for the evangelistic motive among Friends has never been merely a propagandum for the increase of membership.

   • 1908 March 14, The Christian Advocate, quotee, “The Religious World: Misapprehended Sectarianism”, in The Literary Digest, volume XXXVI, number 11 (whole 934), New York, N.Y.: Funk & Wagnalls Company, […], page 370, columns 1–2:

     In the very nature of the case a college can not be sectarian. When it is founded in a community it excludes other colleges because of insufficient patronage for more than one college, therefore its doors must be open from all sides and it must offer its privileges to all persons, Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Gentile alike, and as a Christian obligation it must abstain from interfering with the conscience and religious rights of those seeking learning within its walls. It is not a propagandum. It must leave all of that work to the churches.

   • 1908 March 20, Joseph Jastrow, “Notes and News”, in Frederick J[ames] E[ugene] Woodbridge, Wendell T. Bush, editors, The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, volume V, number 9, published 1908 April 23, page 251:

     Dr. Hyslop’s wielding of the old-time charge of materialism seems futile. We differ as essentially as to what is implied in that term as in the meaning of such conceptions as the spiritualistic phase of life. But centrally as to the logic of evidence, the significance of science, the mission and interests of psychology, I can not but regard Dr. Hyslop’s argument as evasive and confusing; and I am quite content to leave this difference to the judgment of trained and interested judges. The entire attitude (or may I say physiognomy?) of such books as Dr. Hyslop’s seems to me unrelated to the procedure by which science expands, and seems affiliated to what is often termed a propagandum.

   • 1911 August 1, Mr. Harrison, quotee, Congressional Record: Containing the Proceedings and Debates of the Sixty-Second Congress, First Session, volume XLVII, Washington, D.C., page 3451, column 1:

     Now, these same interests in New England are instigating a propagandum to the effect that the Democratic cotton bill will shut down the mills of the United States, throw the working people out of employment in some cases, and reduce wages in all.

   • 1912, “Neuroses”, in Hugh T. Patrick, Peter Bassoe, editors, Nervous and Mental Diseases (The Practical Medicine Series: Comprising Ten Volumes on the Year’s Progress in Medicine and Surgery; X), Chicago, Ill.: The Year Book Publishers, […], pages 17 and 19:

     The procedure of those authors who carry on a propagandum in lay journals about this method of treatment, which at best is not proven and which is rejected by many, deserves emphatic disapproval. […] He apologizes for mentioning these absurdities, but it is necessary to utter a warning and to realize that under the flag of science and medical art a propagandum is being made for an altogether objectionable and dangerous mode of treatment.

   • 1912, J[oseph] Berg Esenwein, “Anatole France, Former Man and New”, in Short-Story Masterpieces, volume II (French), Springfield, Mass.: The Home Correspondence School, page 134:

     From this courageous stand it was only a single step to a propagandum to abolish the many abuses which he feels weigh heavily upon the masses—war, plutocracy, clericalism, militarism.

   • 1912, E. W. Taylor, Robert M. Green, editors, The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, volume CLXVII, Boston, Mass.: W. M. Leonard, […], pages 337 and 561:

     In this relation we note with gratification the visit to this country of Mr. Leon Gaster, tin founder and secretary of the Illuminating Society of England, and editor of the Illuminating Engineer. Mr. Gaster is engaged in a propagandum for the better lighting of places of business, factories, schools and homes; in order especially that working people and school children shall have their eyes safeguarded from strain and their bodies from accident by reason of bad lighting. […] At the time of their publication, these views met with considerable opposition in various parts of the country. So effective, however, has been the propagandum against the midwife, that much of this opposition appears already to have been overcome, and there is a growing sentiment against the midwife among those who have given the subject serious consideration.

   • 1912 December, Wilhelm Bodemann, “Applied Cooperation”, in The Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association, volume I, number 12, page 1391:

     An unsuccessful professional is a pitiable farce, and a danger, for with the unsuccessful goes limited capital, and a shortage in the exchequer is a mighty slippery path for the honest and conscientious. On the other hand an unprofessional commercialist is a menace and a disgrace. It is true we cannot all be scientific, but we can at least be honest. We need not be four-flushers. Let the two great bodies join hands and start a propagandum for honesty and for self respect.

   • 1913, J. J., “Spiritualism”, in Paul Monroe, editor, A Cyclopedia of Education, volume five, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, page 404, column 2:

     The revelational trance utterances rely upon the internal evidence of their content apparently inaccessible to ordinary channels of information. Kindred evidence has been in part offered in proof of telepathy (q.v.), and of psychical research. To appraise this evidence is most difficult and leads to an examination of the psychological motives of predilection for such belief, of the psychology of malobservation, prepossession, and the religious interest in a propagandum.

   • 1913, “Tobacco and the Nervous System”, in Hugh T. Patrick, Peter Bassoe, editors, Nervous and Mental Diseases (The Practical Medicine Series: Comprising Ten Volumes on the Year’s Progress in Medicine and Surgery; X), Chicago, Ill.: The Year Book Publishers, […], page 187:

     The high toxicity of nicotine should call for a propagandum for the introduction of smoking material from which nicotine has been removed.

   • 1913 June, Thomas Percival Beyer, “Educing and Traducing: Some Remarks on Education and Treason”, in The Forum, volume XLIX, New York, N.Y., London: Mitchell Kennerley, section VIII, pages 656–657:

     Tolerance has always been the method of the great teachers. Socrates took men on their own premises, and led them to his conclusions, making them feel all the while that they themselves were directing the route and determining the destination. He knew the necessity of being fair to the other man’s assumptions and logic from the purely utilitarian standpoint of one who himself had a propagandum.

   • 1915, L[ouis] P[ope] Gratacap, “Germanization”, in Europe’s Handicap—Tribe and Class, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Benton, page 303:

     All of this agitation before the Furor Teutonicus is hopelessly childish. At the completion of this war Germany and all of Europe will be a material and moral devastation. Flat on its back, neither Germanization nor any other nationalism, as a process of subjugation, or a propagandum of ideas, will be thought of.

   • 1915, Interior Architecture & Decoration Combined with Good Furniture & Decoration, volume 5, page 262, column 2:

     It has been said that through the “movies” a propagandum of art might be established to spread grace, beauty and culture throughout the land.

   • 1915, “Cancer: An Argument for Physical Examination of Adults at Frequent Intervals”, in W. A. Jones, editor, The Journal-Lancet: The Journal of the Minnesota State Medical Association and Official Organ of the North Dakota and South Dakota State Medical Associations;  […], volume XXXV, Minneapolis, Minn.: W. L. Klein, […], pages 356–357:

     Parallel with a propagandum to the public, urging early presentation of all tumors for diagnosis, there must be pushed forward dispensary or other similar services at which they may present themselves. […] Propagandum work to the public rarely achieves its ends when directed wholly by those whom the public, rightly or wrongly, feel may be interested in the results. But the Minnesota Public Health Association has already begun the cancer propagandum in Minnesota; and, we believe, the medical profession can and should cooperate in its work, particularly in this direction.

   • 1915, “The Reduction of Cancer”, in The Saint Paul Medical Journal, volume 17, page 526:

     During the last five years various cancer commissions throughout this country, both as local units and as the American society, have been waging a propagandum of education chiefly directing their endeavors toward the enlightenment of the people and arousing more interest among physicians in the cancer problem.

   • 1915 June, Joseph Jastrow, “The Antecedents of the Study of Character and Temperament”, in J[ames] McKeen Cattell, editor, The Popular Science Monthly, volume LXXXVI, number 36, New York, N.Y.: The Science Press, page 610:

     This account of one strand in the network of data indispensable to the establishment of a psychological point of view is presumably typical of parallel movements. It indicates how recent are the steps of direct bearing upon present-day problems, and in so far justifies the slight consideration (in the present connection) of the remoter and more fragmentary historical antecedents. It will also make it easy to understand how readily in the absence of an accredited and established view of the bodily correlates of mental action, the ambitious innovations as well as the traditional survivals of beliefs could gain a foothold. This is true in part of even so late a propagandum as that of Lavater—which in large measure was operative before the day of the most decisive discoveries—and to the careers of Gall and Spurzheim, whose contributions in part came after them.

   • 1918 November 9, “Canada Looking to the Future of Her Trade”, in The Commercial & Financial Chronicle, volume 107, number 2785, New York, N.Y., page 1780, column 1:

     But the four hundred factories must take up the jobs of peace, and for that transformation the preparations have not been by any means elaborate. In this emergency the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association has launched a propagandum to help industrial re-adjustment. Such efforts, far from unifying the tariff schools, have created an intense animosity on the part of the farming classes, providing a reasonable prophecy of the issue in the next Dominion political battle.

   • 1919, “Criticism of the Pension Fund”, in The Churchman, volume 120, page 8, column 2:

     IN certain quarters a propagandum not always scrupulous in its handling of facts or restrained in its language has been directed against the administration of the Church Pension Fund.

   • 1919 July, Wilton Lackaye, “Is the Stage of Today Worth While?”, in Theatre Magazine, volume XXX, number 221, New York, N.Y.: The Theatre Magazine Company, page 32, column 2:

     If the purpose of art is not propaganda of religion neither is it exaltation of filth. If a propagandum play may be justly called sensational what shall we say of one which panders to obscenity?

   • 1922, Colliery Guardian, and Journal of the Coal and Iron Trades, volume 123, page 476, column 1:

     Meetings of a propagandum character have taken place at Caerphilly, and also at a number of other centres in the coal field, there being a strong incentive to reorganisation put forward by the Federation leaders.

   • 1922, E. B., “Motherhood”, in Henry Goodwin Webster, editor, Long Island Medical Journal, volume XVI, Brooklyn, N.Y.: Associated Physicians of Long Island, page 358, column 1:

     The author very evidently has a propagandum to educate people to join the Euthenics Society of Peoria, Illinois, whose object seems to be a study of pre-natal influence.

   • 1924, Skinner Packing House News, volumes 3–5, page 13, column 1:

     In contrast to this forty cents go for meat, twenty for dairy products, and another twenty for refined sugar and cereals. The cake and candy bill is higher than that for fruits and vegetables. Now would it be unfair to any one to start a propagandum which would rearrange these figures? Not at all. The farmer produces everything in the food list.

   • 1931, Christian Faith and Life, page 195, column 1:

     Mysticism infested the cloister from the beginning of monasticism in the church; indeed, in a large sense, mysticism created the monastery and maintained it until it was transmuted into an industrial corporation or a propagandum for the extension of papal ecclesiasticism.

Latin

Participle

prōpāgandum

1. inflection of prōpāgandus:
   1. nominative/accusative/vocative neuter singular
   2. accusative masculine singular