Word.ws English Dictionary

etymological fallacy

etymological fallacy noun: the argument that a word is defined solely by its etymology and that its customary usage can therefore be incorrect.

Noun

etymological fallacy (plural etymological fallacies)

  1. The argument that a word is defined solely by its etymology and that its customary usage can therefore be incorrect.

Forms of etymological fallacy

pluraletymological fallacies

Questions about etymological fallacy

What does etymological fallacy mean?
Etymological fallacy means the argument that a word is defined solely by its etymology and that its customary usage can therefore be incorrect.
What part of speech is etymological fallacy?
Etymological fallacy is a noun.
What is the plural of etymological fallacy?
The plural of etymological fallacy is etymological fallacies.

Words near etymological fallacy in the dictionary

  1. etymologic
  2. etymological
  3. etymological argument
  4. etymological arguments
  5. etymological fallacies
  6. etymological fallacy
  7. etymological hybrid
  8. etymological hybrids
  9. etymologically
  10. etymologick
  11. etymologicon

Source and license

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