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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.
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
Sean Keeler, Denver Post, 30 Mar. 2025
And Messi, the arch stoic, was no longer able to hold back the emotion.
—Jack Lang, The Athletic, 14 July 2024
Soo Kim, MSNBC Newsweek, 22 Oct. 2025
Successful in disputing Dunbar’s religious exception status are true and deep, Disney’s 20th TV Friday were almost stoic in their victory.
—Dominic Patten, Deadline, 17 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for stoic
Cite this Entry
“Stoic.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stoic. Accessed 31 Oct. 2025.
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stoic
1 of 2 noun
stoic
2 of 2 adjective
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