Word.ws English Dictionary

corpus fetishism

corpus fetishism noun: an insistence that the only valid source of illustrative examples of words or language constructs is from the corpus (existing body of literature) of the language.

Noun

corpus fetishism (uncountable)

  1. An insistence that the only valid source of illustrative examples of words or language constructs is from the corpus (existing body of literature) of the language

Origin of corpus fetishism

Probably coined by linguist Geoffrey Pullum. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000122.htmlhttp://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000058.html

Questions about corpus fetishism

What does corpus fetishism mean?
Corpus fetishism means an insistence that the only valid source of illustrative examples of words or language constructs is from the corpus (existing body of literature) of the language.
What part of speech is corpus fetishism?
Corpus fetishism is a noun.

Words near corpus fetishism in the dictionary

  1. corpus cavernosum
  2. corpus cavernosum clitoridis
  3. corpus cavernosum penis
  4. Corpus Christi
  5. corpus delicti
  6. corpus fetishism
  7. corpus fimbriatum
  8. corpus juris
  9. corpus language
  10. corpus languages
  11. corpus linguistics

Source and license

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