stigma
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈstɪɡmə/
rhymes: -ɪɡmə
Forms: form: stigmata
form: stigmas
form: stigmat
form: stigmate
form: stigme
Etymology: From Latin stigma, from Ancient Greek στίγμα (stígma, “brand”), from στίζω (stízō, “I mark”). Distantly related to stick. (Compare Middle English stigme, from the same Latin source.)
Senses: examples: text: But to have as an enforced dining companion a man who was probably a Papist, certainly a rake, and bore the stigma of cowardice, was anathema.
ref: 2023 September 8, David Donachie, A Shred of Honour: A Markham of the Marines Novel, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 2:
glosses: A mark of infamy or disgrace.
examples: text: Yet, because of the stigma around nursing home placement, it is hard to find advocates from among the natural advocacy groups the families. You don't see families organized around long-term care as you do around specific diseases.
ref: 1982, Journal of Gerontological Nursing:
text: Hence, the stigma attached to mental disorders in general forms the basis of the stigma towards women with mental health problems. […]
ref: 2010 March 18, Dora Kohen, Oxford Textbook of Women and Mental Health, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 5:
text: Coming into contact with the person affected by mental illness can help reduce the stigma that the public has towards the illness.
ref: 2018 March 8, Darko Pozder, Without Stigma: About the Stigma of the Mental Illness, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN:
text: ... the stigma in the United States about the lower class accessing “welfare,” […]
ref: 2024 December 15, Amy Speier, Mobility in North American Surrogacy: A Fertile Global Industry, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, →ISBN, page 67:
glosses: A negative and often unfair attitude (held by a group or society, to something).
glosses: A scar or birthmark.
topics: Christianity
qualifier: chiefly in the plural stigmata
glosses: A mark on the body corresponding to one of the wounds of the Crucifixion on Jesus's body, and sometimes reported to bleed periodically.
examples: text: Bradly scowled - the stigmata of alarm. What ultimate threat to his peace and privacy did this dropping in by young Podson imply?
ref: 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 65:
glosses: An outward sign; an indication.
examples: text: Black crowberry. Empetrum nigrum. Crowberry Family. Fruit. — The black drupe is berrylike, globular, and incloses six to nine seedlike nutlets with a seed in each. The calyx is at the base and the stigma is at the apex. The drupes are solitary in the leaf axils. They are juicy, acid, edible, and serve as food for the Arctic birds.
ref: 1905, Maude Gridley Peterson, How to Know Wild Fruits: A Guide to Plants When Not in Flower by Means of Fruit and Leaf, Macmillan, page 202:
text: Now you see just how the stamen gets its lusty dust onto the stigma / And why this frenzied chlorophyllous orgy starts in spring is no enigma!
ref: 1982, Dennis Linde, “Reproduction”, in Grease 2:
topics: biology
botany
natural-sciences
synonyms: summit
glosses: The sticky part of a flower that receives pollen during pollination.
topics: medicine
sciences
glosses: A visible sign or characteristic of a disease.
topics: biology
natural-sciences
zoology
glosses: Synonym of pterostigma.
synonyms: word: pterostigma
Derived terms: orbicular stigma
social stigma
stigmatic
stigmatize
stigmatose
Related terms: astigmatism