Obiter Dictum
A remark made in passing — memorable, quotable, and not the main point.
Obiter dictum is Latin for 'a thing said in passing' (plural: obiter dicta). The phrase belongs first to law, where it names a statement a judge makes in the course of a ruling that is not necessary to the decision itself. Such statements do not bind future courts the way the ratio decidendi — the reasoning that actually decides the case — does. They are the judge thinking aloud on the way to the point.
Outside the courtroom the phrase has drifted into broader use for any memorable remark made in passing: an aside in a lecture, a footnote in an essay, a sentence dropped into a conversation that turns out to be the most quoted thing anyone said that day. The category is important because a great deal of quotable wisdom is obiter — not the argument its author was making, but something noticed along the way.
Quoting an obiter dictum honestly means acknowledging its status. It is not the author's considered doctrine; it is a passing observation, however brilliant. Presenting it as the author's settled position — 'as Justice Holmes held' when he only mused — is a small but real distortion.
The practical use for a writer: keep a notebook of your own obiter dicta and other people's. Some of them will turn out to have been the real argument all along.
“Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
Keep reading the glossary
An authoritative pronouncement — a saying with the weight of a verdict.
A remark delivered off to the side of the main speech — to the audience, to oneself, or in a parenthesis.
A short, witty, often satirical statement built on a clever turn.
A short, sharp statement that compresses a truth or observation into a single line.