Discipline Definition: From Daily Habits to Academic Fields

What discipline means: four senses

1. Self-control and steady effort. Doing what you planned even when you do not feel like it. "It takes discipline to save part of every salary." This is often called self-discipline.
2. Order kept by rules. The system that keeps a group under control: "discipline in the classroom", "military discipline".
3. Correction or punishment. What happens when rules are broken. "The player faced discipline for the red card."
4. A field of study or skill. "Economics and sociology are related disciplines." In sport, events are sometimes called disciplines too: sprint and long jump are different athletics disciplines.

As a verb, discipline means either to train ("discipline yourself to read daily") or to punish ("the company disciplined two managers"). Context tells you which.

Discipline definition in real sentences

• Learning the violin as an adult needs patience and daily discipline more than talent.
• The school's new phone rule has improved discipline in the corridors.
• Three staff members were disciplined after the safety audit.
• She switched from physics to architecture, a discipline that mixes art with engineering.
• His disciplined budgeting meant the family could afford the trip without a loan.

Self-discipline and motivation

People often contrast discipline with motivation. Motivation is the wish to do something; discipline is doing it whether or not the wish is there today. Writers on habits often say motivation starts things and discipline keeps them going.

Discipline is closely linked to perseverance and grit, which describe sticking with long goals, and to being diligent, which is about careful, hard work. The opposite habit, putting tasks off, is procrastination.

Discipline at work and in school

In workplaces, disciplinary is the key adjective. A disciplinary procedure is the formal process an employer follows when an employee may have broken rules: a warning, a hearing, and sometimes suspension or dismissal. Indian colleges have a "disciplinary committee", and government departments hold "disciplinary proceedings".

In schools, discipline used to mean mostly punishment. Many educators now talk about positive discipline, which focuses on teaching expected behaviour and natural consequences rather than fear. People still debate the right balance between firmness and warmth, and families and schools differ widely on it.

Word origin

The definition of discipline is easier to remember when you know where the word started. English picked up discipline from French around the thirteenth century, and French had it from Latin disciplina, "instruction, teaching, knowledge". That word is built on discipulus, "pupil, learner", the same word that gave us disciple. So at its root, discipline was simply what a student received from a teacher. The sense of punishment developed later, from the idea of the correction that is part of training, and the sense of a field of study kept the original link to learning.

Forms, pairings and close words

Typical pairings: strict discipline, maintain discipline, lack of discipline, enforce discipline, financial discipline. Close words include self-control, restraint, order, training and, for the study sense, field, subject, branch. More character words live in everyday vocabulary.