Word.ws English Dictionary

cacozelia

cacozelia noun: a stylistic affectation of diction, such as throwing in foreign words to appear learned.

Noun

cacozelia (uncountable)

  1. (rhetoric) A stylistic affectation of diction, such as throwing in foreign words to appear learned.
  2. (rhetoric) Bad taste in words or selection of metaphor, either to make the facts appear worse or to disgust the auditors.

Origin of cacozelia

From Latin cacozēlia (“a bad, faulty, awkward imitation”), from Ancient Greek κᾰκοζηλία (kăkozēlía, “unhappy imitation, affectation”).

Questions about cacozelia

What does cacozelia mean?
Cacozelia means a stylistic affectation of diction, such as throwing in foreign words to appear learned.
What part of speech is cacozelia?
Cacozelia is a noun.

Words near cacozelia in the dictionary

  1. cacotrophic
  2. cacotrophy
  3. cacoxene
  4. cacoxenite
  5. cacozealous
  6. cacozelia
  7. cacoëpy
  8. cacoëthe
  9. cacoëthes
  10. cacoëthic
  11. cacoëthical

Source and license

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