Word.ws English Dictionary

asteism

asteism noun: polite irony; a genteel and ingenious manner of deriding another.

Noun

asteism (countable and uncountable, plural asteisms)

  1. Polite irony; a genteel and ingenious manner of deriding another.

Forms of asteism

pluralasteisms

Origin of asteism

Ultimately from Ancient Greek ἀστεῖος (asteîos, “of the town; urbane”), from ἄστυ (ástu, “town”). Compare Greek αστεϊσμός (asteïsmós).

Questions about asteism

What does asteism mean?
Asteism means polite irony; a genteel and ingenious manner of deriding another.
What part of speech is asteism?
Asteism is a noun.
What is the plural of asteism?
The plural of asteism is asteisms.

Words near asteism in the dictionary

  1. asteatosis
  2. asteatotic
  3. asteer
  4. asteiid
  5. asteiids
  6. asteism
  7. asteisms
  8. asteismus
  9. asteistic
  10. astelia
  11. astelias

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: asteism (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: “asteism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/asteism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.