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aptonymy

aptonymy noun: the state of being an aptonym.

Noun

aptonymy (uncountable)

  1. The state of being an aptonym.
    • Now, I don't know whether this is an example of nominative determinism – a phrase coined by the New Scientist to describe the phenomenon of one's name determining one's career – or aptonymy, the more coincidental occurrence of one's name being particularly fitting for one's personality, but I came...2009, Alex Horne, Birdwatchingwatching: One Year, Two Men, Three Rules, Ten Thousand Birds, →ISBN
  2. The study of aptonyms.
    • The aptonym has become nowadays the study object of the science called aptonymy.2007, Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai: Philologia - Issues 1-3, page 237

Origin of aptonymy

From aptonym + -y.

Questions about aptonymy

What does aptonymy mean?
Aptonymy means the state of being an aptonym.
What part of speech is aptonymy?
Aptonymy is a noun.

Words near aptonymy in the dictionary

  1. apto
  2. aptocaine
  3. aptonym
  4. aptonymous
  5. aptonyms
  6. aptonymy
  7. aptophilia
  8. aptoprecipitate
  9. aptoprecipitated
  10. aptoprecipitates
  11. aptoprecipitating

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: aptonymy (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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