discrimen

Borrowed from Latin discrimen

discrimen (plural discrimina or discrimens)

1. (entomology) A visible dividing line where two structures come together.
   • 1944, Charles Duncan Michener, Comparative external morphology, phylogeny, and a classification of the bees (Hymenoptera), page 173:

     Except for the coxal socket, the most constant landmarks of the subcoxal region are the midventral discrimen, resulting from the meeting of opposite subcoxae whose contiguous margins have been infolded posteriorly to form the sternal apophyses, and the pleural suture extending from the dorsal articulation of the coxa to the pleural wing process.

   • 1960, Fred A. Urquhart, The monarch butterfly, page 227:

     Mid-ventrally the sternopleurites unite in a suture, the discrimen, whose inflection forms the very high transparent lamella of the discrimen.

   • 1998, Michael Andrew Prentice, The Comparative Morphology and Phylogeny of Apoid Wasps (Hymenoptera: Apoidea), page 420:

     In a number of forms the discrimen appears to bifurcate at its anterior end, as well seen in Odontosphex.

   • 2005, David Grimaldi & ‎Michael S. Engel, Evolution of the Insects, →ISBN, page 121:

     The eusternum may be reduced to form a tiny furcasternum (= to the portion sometimes called the sternellum) or an internal cryptosternum indicated externally by a single median, longitudinal line called the discrimen.

2. A distinction, particularity, or distinguishing feature.
   • 1865, James Hutchison Stirling, The Secret of Hegel:

     We admit Nothing to exist; Nothing is an intelligible distinction; we talk of thinking Nothing and of perceiving Nothing: in other words, Nothing is the abstraction from every discrimen or particularity. But an abstraction from every discrimen, does not involve the destruction of every or any discrimen, all discrimina still exist; in Nothing we have simply withdrawn into indefiniteness.

   • 1998, Jan Patočka & ‎James Dodd, Body, Community, Language, World, →ISBN, page 133:

     That is how human affectivity places us ever before us in this discrimen. The world then addresses us — affectively, in feelings, and at the same time in senses, impressions — in connection with this differentiation. Yet in the case of the animal and the child we also have to do with a world given in perception though there is no such discrimen present.

   • 1998, Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology, →ISBN:

     This stopping point is imposed by an authority: the traditional idea of philosophy (which Heidegger will later name "metaphysics"). Related to the discrimens of the phenomenological — to consider not the phenomena, but the "mode of their exposition [Art ihrer Aufiveisung] " — one must therefore conclude — as violent as the paradox may seem — that Husserl's phenomenology remains unphenomenological: "In the basic task of determining its ownmost field, therefore, phenomenology is unphenomenological [unphänomenologisch]! — that is to say, phenomenological only in intention [vermeintlich phänomenologisch]!

3. A crisis or turning point; A situation that changes how the future will unfold.
   • 1992, Jamie Masters, Poetry and Civil War in Lucan's Bellum Civile, →ISBN, page 64:

     But civil war creates as many boundaries as it destroys: its keynote is division, and it is itself a discrimen.

   • 2003, George Hugo Tucker, Homo Viator, →ISBN:

     Indeed, as we have further suggested, this follows on also, in the eyes of the pilgrim- visitors themselves, from their own earlier moment of discrimen, at the point when the "old man'"s pilgrim-interlocutor had similarly exclaimed "O Hercules" on learning the Sphinx-like nature of the explanation being proffered to them.

4. (theology) A pattern or organizing principle that forms the basis of moral judgements.
   • 1995, James B. Tubbs Jr, Christian Theology and Medical Ethics: Four Contemporary Approaches, →ISBN:

     Some years ago James Gustafson advanced the thesis that any comprehensive and systematic account of theological ethics must have a central "discrimen" - an organizing perspective, principle, metaphor or analogy around which it is structured. That discrimen must relate in a coherent fashion four "base points": an understanding of God and God's purposes in relation to humans and the rest of creation; an interpretation of the significance of "the world" and human life in it; an interpretation of human moral agency and actionsl and an interpretation of how we ought to make moral choices and judgements.

   • 2000, Cleophus James LaRue, The Heart of Black Preaching, →ISBN, page 18:

     The discrimen, or pattern, that each theologian eventually chooses is his or her own distinctive construal of the discrimen that guides his or her critical theological judgements.

   • 2003, William Thomas Dickens, Hans Urs Von Balthasar's Theological Aesthetics, →ISBN:

     And if we were to link this discrimen to Balthasar's synoptic judgment about what Christianity is all about, then it would be associated with humanity's participation in God as that is realized in God's incarnation in the person Jesus Christ. I do not wish to imply that these two discrimens are the only two with which Balthasar operated.

   • 2012, Michael Bywater, Big Babies: Or: Why Can't We Just Grow Up?, →ISBN:

     But if discrimen is a cardinal virtue of adulthood, the tenets of infantilism work against it. Discrimen requires right judgement; but the idea of something, even judgment, being 'right', is in profound conflict with individualism (which says I can only claim my judgement as being right for me).

From discernō (“set apart, differentiate, decide”) +‎ -men (noun-forming suffix).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /disˈkriː.men/, [dɪsˈkriː.mɛn]

discrīmen n (genitive discrīminis); third declension

1. distinction, difference
2. division, separation
3. decision
4. crisis, hazard, danger, risk
5. encounter, battle

Third declension neuter.

• discrīminō

• discrimen in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• discrimen in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• discrimen in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• discrimen in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette
• Carl Meissner; Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎, London: Macmillan and Co.
  • just at the critical moment: in ipso discrimine (articulo) temporis
    
  • the position is very critical: res in summo discrimine versatur
    
  • to be in peril of one's life: in vitae discrimine versari
    
  • to risk one's life: salutem, vitam suam in discrimen offerre (not exponere)
    
  • to endanger, imperil a person or thing: aliquem, aliquid in periculum (discrimen) adducere, vocare
    
  • to recklessly hazard one's life: in periculum capitis, in discrimen vitae se inferre
    
  • a man's life is at stake, is in very great danger: salus, caput, vita alicuius agitur, periclitatur, in discrimine est or versatur
    
  • at the critical moment: in ipso periculi discrimine
    
  • the position is critical: res est in periculo, in summo discrimine
    

discrimen m (uncountable)

1. (Peru, Ecuador) discrimination