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What is the origin of stoic?
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.
Synonyms
Examples of stoic in a Sentence
Austin Murphy, Sports Illustrated, 27 Nov. 2006
The philosophical implications of this claim are as volcanic as the emotions it depicts, for Nussbaum here counters an age-old view espoused by Stoics, Christians and Kantians, alike: emotions are disruptive and subversive to reason, they arise from parochial needs and interests and therefore the life well lived is the life in which the things of this world are left behind for a higher sphere beyond accident, pain and desire.
—Wendy Steiner, New York Times Book Review, 18 Nov. 2001
Whereas Ludwig Wittgenstein once compared philosophers to garbage men sweeping the mind clean of wrongheaded concepts, Nussbaum believes they should be "lawyers for humanity"—a phrase she borrows from Seneca, her favorite Stoic thinker.
—Robert S. Boynton, New York Times Magazine, 21 Nov. 1999
Adjective
My stoic Serbian brother-in-law, Aleksandar Vasilic, gave me the ultimate confidence booster of bawling all the way through the manuscript when I gave it to him to read.
—Helene Cooper, The House At Sugar Beach, (2008) 2009
Grant recorded his thought-experiment when he was an old man dying of cancer, who in spite of his pain had managed to achieve a stoical serenity.
—Jackson Lears, New Republic, 9 & 16 Sept. 2002
As it flew past the pole, a three-run homer, Richardson saw the stoical Berra do something he'd never seen him do. "Halfway between home and first, he was jumping up and down," Richardson recalls. "Boy, was he happy to hit that ball!"
—William Nack, Sports Illustrated, 23 Oct. 2000
He had a stoic expression on his face.
after waiting six years for permission to immigrate to the U.S., the family is stoic about a six-month postponement
Claudio Lavanga, NBC News, 9 Feb. 2024
This scene occurs scarcely ten minutes after Rocky has seen Apollo Creed, now his friend, killed in the ring by Ivan Drago, a menacing Soviet stoic.
—Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker, 7 Mar. 2023
Valerie Mesa, People.com, 28 Oct. 2024
Buckner stood, stoic and patient, answering for his mistake until every inquisitor was satisfied.
—Nicholas Dawidoff, The New Yorker, 26 Oct. 2024
See all Example Sentences for stoic 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'stoic.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Stoic.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stoic. Accessed 3 Nov. 2024.
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stoic
1 of 2 noun
stoic
2 of 2 adjective
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