Word.ws English Dictionary

gattopardism

gattopardism noun: the creation of political reforms that are only apparent rather than substantial.

Noun

gattopardism (uncountable)

  1. The creation of political reforms that are only apparent rather than substantial.
    • To sum up, the old principle of leaving things as they are, the worst forms of transformism and gattopardism, the prevalence of diplomacy over politics, of Guicciardini over Machiavelli, to quote Gramsci, crushed any real possibility of innovation in Europe.1991, The Federalist, volume 33, page 33

Origin of gattopardism

Ultimately from the novel The Leopard (Italian: Il Gattopardo) by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

Questions about gattopardism

What does gattopardism mean?
Gattopardism means the creation of political reforms that are only apparent rather than substantial.
What part of speech is gattopardism?
Gattopardism is a noun.

Words near gattopardism in the dictionary

  1. gatting
  2. Gattis
  3. Gatton
  4. Gattons
  5. Gattopardian
  6. gattopardism
  7. Gatts
  8. Gattuso
  9. Gattusos
  10. Gattwo
  11. Gatum

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gattopardism (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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