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Watchword or catchword
Answer for the clue "Watchword or catchword ", 10 letters:
shibboleth
Alternative clues for the word shibboleth
Word definitions for shibboleth in dictionaries
Wiktionary
Word definitions in Wiktionary
n. 1 A word, especially seen as a test, to distinguish someone as belonging to a particular nation, class, profession etc. 2 A common or longstanding belief, custom, or catchphrase associated with a particular group, especially one with little current meaning ...
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Word definitions in Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 14c., the Hebrew word shibboleth , meaning "flood, stream," also "ear of corn;" in Judges xii:4-6. It was the password used by the Gileadites to distinguish their own men from fleeing Ephraimites, because Ephraimites could not pronounce the -sh- sound. ...
Wikipedia
Word definitions in Wikipedia
A shibboleth is a word or custom whose variations in pronunciation or style are used to differentiate members of ingroups from those of outgroups , with each receiving value judgments of superior or inferior. Over time the word has also evolved to signify ...
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Word definitions in The Collaborative International Dictionary
Shibboleth \Shib"bo*leth\, n. [Heb. shibb[=o]leth an ear of corn, or a stream, a flood.] A word which was made the criterion by which to distinguish the Ephraimites from the Gileadites. The Ephraimites, not being able to pronounce sh, called the word sibboleth. ...
Usage examples of shibboleth.
It will mean discarding many shibboleths, the naive molecular reductionism of the biochemists, the and behaviourism of the psychologists, but we can see the goal clearly.
When we got back to the inn, Marcoline told me that her new friend had given her the Florentine kiss: this is the shibboleth of the sect.
Sherry when sojourning there could not but appeal to a young lady who had been irked all her own short life by shibboleths and restrictions.
It is his shibboleth that he is politically equal to the best, that he is independent, and that his labor, though it earn him but a dollar a day by porterage, places him as a citizen on an equal rank with the most wealthy fellow-man that may employ or accost him.
The slaphead with the shiny metallic burglar-thwarting-equipment hooter decoration raised a hairless eyebrow and gave Shibboleth the kind of look that a ferret gives a lump of mouse-shaped feta cheese on a cold and frosty morning.
It will mean discarding many shibboleths, the naive molecular reductionism of the biochemists, the and behaviourism of the psychologists, but we can see the goal clearly.
Their motions seemed a little meaningless to one so far removed from all the fetishes and shibboleths of Westminster.
When he had become a man at half-past fifteen, he had assumed the senseless shibboleths of his flaminate without a murmur or a look, and Aurelia had heaved a sigh of relief.
Mankind to put old cultural shibboleths aside and step into the bright socialist dawn.
The shibboleths of the past are ever more real than the actualities of the present.
So finally, noble sirs, if this be sooth—then, in the matter of the dottles and the night, what, indeed, is one more broken shibboleth?