Word.ws English Dictionary

Empsonian

UK/ɛmpˈsəʊ.ni.ən/US/ɛmpˈsoʊ.ni.ən/

Empsonian adjective: of or pertaining to William Empson (1906–1984), English literary critic and poet.

Adjective

Empsonian (comparative more Empsonian, superlative most Empsonian)

  1. Of or pertaining to William Empson (1906–1984), English literary critic and poet.
    • It was a memory of a poetry lesson in her training college in Liverpool: an earnest Empsonian young man, not really attractive.1959, Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 620

Forms of Empsonian

comparativemore Empsonian
superlativemost Empsonian

Origin of Empsonian

From Empson + -ian.

Words that rhyme with Empsonian

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about Empsonian

What does Empsonian mean?
Empsonian means of or pertaining to William Empson (1906–1984), English literary critic and poet.
What part of speech is Empsonian?
Empsonian is an adjective.
How do you pronounce Empsonian?
Empsonian is pronounced /ɛmpˈsəʊ.ni.ən/ (UK).

Words near Empsonian in the dictionary

  1. emprove
  2. emprovement
  3. emproves
  4. emps
  5. Empson
  6. Empsonian
  7. Empsons
  8. empt
  9. empted
  10. emptiable
  11. emptied

Source and license

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