Philosophy & ThoughtGreek → English
Deontic
/diˈɑntɪk/adjective
Concerning obligation, permission and prohibition rather than fact.
The Greek roots
δέον
déon
that which is binding, duty
Literally: “what must be done”
Follow a root:δέον2 words
The story of the word
δέον is the neuter participle of δεῖ, it is necessary, so the deontic is simply what has to be done. Bentham had already built deontology on the root in the 1830s for his science of duty. The technical sense is younger: von Wright's 1951 paper laid out deontic logic, a formal treatment of obligation and permission, alongside its alethic and epistemic siblings, and linguists later borrowed the term for the must that commands as against the must that predicts.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → philosophical coinage → English
- First recorded
- 20th century
Same family
deontologydeontological
In a sentence
You must be tired is epistemic; you must apologise is deontic.
The paper models permissions in a deontic framework rather than a legal one.