Did you know?
Centuries ago, whenever manuscript writers inserted special instructions or explanations into a book, they put them in red ink to set them off from the black used in the main text. (They used the same practice to highlight saints' names and holy days in calendars, a practice which gave us the term red-letter day.) Ultimately, such special headings or comments came to be called rubrics, a term that traces back to ruber, the Latin word for "red." While the printing sense remains in use today, rubric also has an extended sense referring to any class or category under which something is organized.
Examples of rubric in a Sentence
Keri Heath, Austin American Statesman, 30 July 2025
An affordable housing consultant, speaking on background due to the sensitivity of the situation in Cranbury, told CNN the Henry farm would get a strong score on the state rubric grading how suitable a site is for development into homes.
—Meena Duerson, CNN Money, 24 July 2025
Repetitive tasks such as rewriting rubrics, responding to common requests and drafting feedback are handled by the system, allowing instructors to focus on discussion, coaching, and more complex teaching.
—Ron Schmelzer, Forbes.com, 24 July 2025
Developers create detailed manuals outlining their preferred ethical stances, which either human reviewers or AI systems then use as a rubric to evaluate and improve the chatbot's responses, effectively coding these values into the machine.
—CBS News, 15 July 2025
See All Example Sentences for rubric
Cite this Entry
“Rubric.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rubric. Accessed 5 Aug. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
rubric
noun
Legal Definition
rubric
noun
Share