Word.ws English Dictionary

fossilism

fossilism noun: the science or state of fossils.

Noun

fossilism (uncountable)

  1. The science or state of fossils.
    • April 1797, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, letter to Mr. Cottle
      I would be a tolerable Mathematician, I would thoroughly know Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Optics, and Astronomy, Botany, Metallurgy, Fossilism, Chemistry, Geology, Anatomy, Medicine […]
  2. The state of being extremely antiquated in views and opinions.
  3. A policy of reliance on fossil fuels.
    • Suffice it to say that the recourse to nuclear energy magnifies the problems of fossilism.1998, David Bell, Roger Keil, Political Ecology: Global and Local, page 41

Origin of fossilism

From fossil + -ism.

Questions about fossilism

What does fossilism mean?
Fossilism means the science or state of fossils.
What part of speech is fossilism?
Fossilism is a noun.

Words near fossilism in the dictionary

  1. fossilisations
  2. fossilise
  3. fossilised
  4. fossilises
  5. fossilising
  6. fossilism
  7. fossilist
  8. fossilists
  9. fossility
  10. fossilizable
  11. fossilization

Source and license

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