acroamatic

• acroamatick (obsolete)

Borrowed from Latin acroamaticus, acroaticus (“esoteric”), at first chiefly in reference to the “esoteric” and originally oral teachings of Aristotle, from Ancient Greek ἀκροαματικός (akroamatikós, “for hearing only; esoteric”), from ἀκροάομαι (akroáomai, “to listen”).

acroamatic (comparative more acroamatic, superlative most acroamatic)

1. (rare, chiefly archaic) Of or pertaining to hearing.
   • 1632, Thomas Randolph, The Jealous Lovers, Cambridge, page 59:

     Prate they not cataracts of insensible noise, / That with obstreperous cadence cracks the organs / Acroamatick, till the deaf auditor / Admires the words he heares not?

   • 1922, F. Max Müller, transl., Critique of Pure Reason, translation of Kritik der reinen Vernunft by Immanuel Kant, page 590:

     I should prefer, therefore, to call the former acroamatic, or audible (discursive) proofs, because they can be carried out by words only (the object in thought), rather than demonstrations, which, as the very term implies, depend on the intuition of the object.

   • 2009, Jürgen Trabant, “Herder and Language”, in Hans Adler, Wulf Köpke, editors, A Companion to the Works of Johann Gottfried Herder, Camden House, →ISBN, page 129:

     The idea that the first thought, as an internal event, is always also dialogical, that is, possesses a communicative quality in itself, is connected to its acroamatic origin.

2. Esoteric, abstruse; (in particular) taught orally to select students and not disseminated.
   • 1993, Laurence Lampert, Nietzsche and Modern Times: A Study of Bacon, Descartes, and Nietzsche, →ISBN, page 68:

     How to begin such warfare against sovereign religion in times ruled by the very zealots against whom one must fight? How else but covertly, enigmatically, in the acroamatic manner practiced so beautifully in Holy War?

   • 1995, Philip L. Culbertson, A Word Fitly Spoken: Context, Transmission, and Adoption of the Parables of Jesus, →ISBN, page 38:

     Repeatedly in the Gospels Jesus takes his disciples aside to offer them acroamatic teachings not intended for the mass of listeners or to explain a secret meaning to some parable with which he has entertained the larger crowd.

3. (education) Based on lectures or exposition by monologue.

   Coordinate term: erotematic

   • 1959, Josef Andreas Jungmann, Handing on the Faith: A Manual of Catechetics, page 28:

     Up to that time the “acroamatic” method had been used in which the catechist gave a lecture, and the children were only listeners (ἀκροᾶσθαι).

   • 2015, Nils F. Schott, "A Mother to All" in Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World, p. 108, n. 45:

     [Questions’] employment here does not mark a shift from the acroamatic (lecture-based) to the erotematic (interrogatory) method, for the answers are not known.

• acroamatics

• “acroamatic, adj.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.