dragonism

Noun

dragonism (uncountable)

1. (archaic) watchful guardianship
   • Those who pique themselves on "l'eloquence du billet;" those fair Scribblerinas just emancipated from boarding-school restraint, or from the dragonism of their governesses, just beginning to pour out their pretty souls in the refined intercourse of sentimental, confidential, ineffable...1826, Caroline Anne Southey, Solitary Hour
   • Those who pique themselves on the elegant style of their billets, or those fair scriblerinas just emancipated from boarding school restraints, or the dragonism of their governess, just beginning to taste the refined enjoyments of sentimental, confidential, soul-breathing correspondence with some...1848, William Holmes McGuffey, “On Letter Writing”, in McGuffey's Newly Revised Eclectic Fourth Reader, page 279
2. Despotism; the leadership of a tyrant.
   • Fix your eye, then, as I attempted to do, on the places and time when the Puritans were driven to extremities by the persucutions of Jesuits, [a church with temporal power,] and other enemies of the pure, evangelical truth; and see to what region fro the body of the best of that people , did in...1856, Joseph Frederic Berg, The Stone and the Image, Or, the American Republic, the Bane and Ruin of Despotism, page 215
   • I fear dragonism, in some form or other, will deluge Europe, the British Isles, and various parts of the world besides, with torrents of human blood.1866, John Davis, The Patriarch of Western Nova Scotia: Life and Times of the Late Rev. Harris Harding, page 266
3. (obsolete) Nonsense; unrealistic ideas.
   • It will be a last effort in behalf of a darling cause. Dragonism, infidelity, and false religion, will now be found, each making its last effort!1837, Ethan Smith, Key to the Revelation, page 300
   • These doctrines, of which the inspire apostle is admitted as the "chief corner-stone", he characterizes as "Dragonism", a "congeries of falsities", and as "favoring the natural and sensual man".1862 April, Edward A Lawrence, “Swedenborg's Theory of the Divine-Human”, in Henry Boynton Smith, James Manning Sherwood, editor, American Presbyterian and Theological Review, page 272
4. Dragon lore.
   • So that he, as the god Janus of pagan dragonism, sitteth in the more modern temple of Tau-tau-r-ism, shewing himself, and declaring to the world, that he is god (Janus) of the last dispensation, to whom the dragon or devil gave his chair, possessing the keys of the Dor's, Thor's or Tor's hole or...1858, John Bull, The Treasury of Light, page 440
   • I've heard all the human lore of Eastern Dragonism, all the way back to the primal yin and yang and the plenitude of explanations of how it's best done .1971, Hazard Adams, The Truth about Dragons, page 22