anatopism
anatopism noun: a thing that is out of its proper place; the geographic counterpart to anachronism.
Noun
anatopism (plural anatopisms)
- A thing that is out of its proper place; the geographic counterpart to anachronism.
- A war elephant described rampaging through Tenochtitlan in a novel about the Aztec Empire would be an anatopism.
- […] and can find no associates in size at a less distance than two centuries; and in arranging which the puzzled librarian must commit an anachronism in order to avoid an anatopism.1836: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge, Esq., M. A., ed, The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Examples of anatopism in a sentence
- There is no anachronism in putting them together; it is a sort of anatopism rather; the painter has placed within our view two scenes which no mortal eye could have witnessed at the same time.1912, Augustus Hopkins Strong, Miscellanies:
- It is a remarkable fact that, so far as I can judge, no case of local inconsistency, not a single anatopism, can be brought home to the Iliad.1921, John Anthony Scott, The Unity of Homer:
- Much of the literature on the 'Japanese Miracle' (as well as on that vast anatopism, the transfer of Japanese recipes to Western countries) expatiates on […]1995, Tony Killick, The Flexible Economy: Causes and Consequences of the Adaptability of National Economies:
- […] the semiotic mechanism of reorganizing space in this manner as an anatopism.2006, Lilie Chouliaraki, The Spectatorship of Suffering:
Forms of anatopism
| plural | anatopisms |
|---|
Origin of anatopism
From Ancient Greek ἀνά (aná, “against”) and τόπος (tópos, “place”), apparently by analogy with anachronism.
Questions about anatopism
- What does anatopism mean?
- Anatopism means a thing that is out of its proper place; the geographic counterpart to anachronism.
- How do you use anatopism in a sentence?
- There is no anachronism in putting them together; it is a sort of anatopism rather; the painter has placed within our view two scenes which no mortal eye could have witnessed at the same time.
- What part of speech is anatopism?
- Anatopism is a noun.
- What is the plural of anatopism?
- The plural of anatopism is anatopisms.
Words near anatopism in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: anatopism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “anatopism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/anatopism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.