# dormitive principle

idiom

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/dormitive-principle
Updated: 2026-08-10

## Meaning

A type of tautology in which an item is explained in terms of the item itself, only put in different (usually more abstract) words.

## Examples

- Explaining that water is wet is just a dormitive principle.
- The professor warned the students that defining a process by its own name is a classic dormitive principle.
- The politician's claim that the law failed because it was ineffective is a dormitive principle that avoids explaining the actual reasons for the policy's collapse.
- By claiming that the medicine works because of its healing power, the author relies on a dormitive principle rather than providing a scientific explanation.

## Origin

A modern translation of Latin, virtus dormitiva, coined by Molière in The Imaginary Invalid (1673). In the play, he lampoons a group of physicians providing an explanation in macaronic Latin of the sleep-inducing properties of opium as stemming from its "virtus dormitiva". The currency of this phrase as a critique of scientific claims is due to Gregory Bateson (1976, Steps to an Ecology of Mind p. 5), as is the translation of virtus as 'principle'.

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