Word.ws English Dictionary

chaophilia

UK/ˌkeɪɒˈfɪlɪə/

chaophilia noun: spurious overemphasis of or oversubscription to chaos theory or its characteristic concepts.

Noun

chaophilia (uncountable)

  1. (nonce-word, rare) Spurious overemphasis of or oversubscription to chaos theory or its characteristic concepts.
    • [H]ow can we not deplore the all too frequent distortions of “importations” by anthropologists who think they are “hardening” their discipline by consistently using the language of the “hard” sciences? This is a particularly pernicious form of popularization…Whence the “Gödelism,” “chaophilia,” and...1997, ICPHS, Diogenes, issues 177–180, page 179

Origin of chaophilia

From chao- + -philia. By surface analysis, chao- + -phile + -i- + -a.

Questions about chaophilia

What does chaophilia mean?
Chaophilia means spurious overemphasis of or oversubscription to chaos theory or its characteristic concepts.
What part of speech is chaophilia?
Chaophilia is a noun.
How do you pronounce chaophilia?
Chaophilia is pronounced /ˌkeɪɒˈfɪlɪə/ (UK).

Words near chaophilia in the dictionary

  1. Chaon
  2. Chaonan
  3. chaoni
  4. chaonis
  5. chaoosh
  6. chaophilia
  7. chaophilic
  8. chaoplex
  9. chaoplexic
  10. chaoplexity
  11. chaoplexologist

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chaophilia (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “chaophilia.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chaophilia. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.