dictum

plural dicta · plural dictums

1. An authoritative statement; a dogmatic saying; a maxim, an apothegm.

   […]a dictum which he had heard an economics professor once propound[…]

   1949, Bruce Kiskaddon, George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

   3 more examples

   This should not surprise us who know that van Gogh wrote: 'To paint and to love women is incompatible'; van Gogh was right for himself, which does not mean that he was right for everybody, and I will not draw from his dictum the probably incorrect conclusion that 'To paint and to love literature is incompatible.'

   1918, Walter Lionel George, A Novelist on Novels

   1. The utmost in steam producing capacity permitted by weight and dimensions; in other words, capacity to boil water—H. A. Ivatt's old dictum.

   1951 July, “British Standard Locomotives”, in Railway Magazine, page 438

   But this is not the philosophical revolution of which I speak. What Warhol's dictum amounted to was that you cannot tell when something is a work of art just by looking at it, for there is no particular way that art has to look.

   1992, Arthur Coleman Danto, Beyond the Brillo Box, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 5

2. A judicial opinion expressed by judges on points that do not necessarily arise in the case, and are not involved in it.
3. The report of a judgment made by one of the judges who has given it.
4. An arbitrament or award.