Word.ws English Dictionary

goropism

Syllables: go·rop·i·sm/ɡəˈɹəʊpɪzm̩/US/ɡəˈɹoʊpɪz(ə)m/

goropism noun: a hypothesis, similar to the one originally propounded by Goropius which is now discredited, that some attested or modern language such as Dutch, Hebrew, or Turkish was the original language of human beings.

goropism: a hypothesis, similar to the one originally propounded by Goropius which is now discredited, that...
Image: Jan van Gorp, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

goropism (usually uncountable, plural goropisms)

  1. (usually) A hypothesis, similar to the one originally propounded by Goropius which is now discredited, that some attested or modern language such as Dutch, Hebrew, or Turkish was the original language of human beings.
    • In Book III of G[ottfried] W[ilhelm] Leibniz's New Essays on Human Understanding […] there is a statement on the subject of the so-called goropism, which provided the basis for the principle that is referred to by some scientists and scholars as the Leibniz-Einstein's principle (or postulate)[…]....1994, Jan Such, “The Leibniz-Einstein Principle of the Minimization of Premises”, in Leibniz und Europe: VI Internationaler Leibniz-Kongres: Vorträge 1. Teil, Hannover, Lower Saxony, page 765...
    • [B]ased upon a helio-centric view of the origin of civilization and human languages, the theory claimed that the Turkish language was the language which all civilized languages derived from. Thanks to goropism, some remarkable results were obtained: the word for school is derived from Turkish okul...2010 December, Savasan Yurtsever, chapter 1919, in Psalms Code II: The Secret of the Lord: Almanac of Mankind: The Jesus Cycle, [Scotts Valley, Calif.]: [CreateSpace], →ISBN, page 341, column 2
  2. (usually) An absurd etymology proposed as part of such a hypothesis.
    • He [Johannes Goropius Becanus] produced a string of arguments whose level of etymological wishful thinking matched those of Isidore and [Estienne] Guichard; they later became known as ‘becanisms’ or ‘goropisms’.[1995, Umberto Eco, “The Monogenetic Hypothesis and the Mother Tongues”, in James Fentress, transl., edited by Jacques Le Goff, The Search for the Perfect Language (The Making of Europe), Oxford...
    • But lest we be accused of textual goropism, we should take a closer look at the evidence.2017, David Grant, “Babylon: The Cipher and Rosetta Stone”, in In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great, Kibworth Beauchamp, Leicestershire: Matador, →ISBN, page 465

Forms of goropism

pluralgoropisms

Origin of goropism

From Goropius + -ism (suffix forming names of schools of thought, systems, or theories), possibly influenced by French goropiser (“to goropize”), coined by the German philosopher and scientist Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) in his work Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain (New Essays on Human Understanding, written 1704, published 1765). Goropius was the name of the Dutch physician and linguist Johannes Goropius Becanus (1519–1573) who hypothesized that the oldest language on earth would be the simplest language, and since Brabantic (a Dutch dialect) had more short words than Greek, Hebrew, or Latin, it was the language spoken by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden from which all other languages derived. The name is from Dutch Gorp (“hamlet in Hilvarenbeek, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands”) (Goropius’ birthplace) + Latin -ius (suffix forming adjectives from nouns, and used to Latinize surnames).

Questions about goropism

What does goropism mean?
Goropism means a hypothesis, similar to the one originally propounded by Goropius which is now discredited, that some attested or modern language such as Dutch, Hebrew, or Turkish was the original language of human beings.
What part of speech is goropism?
Goropism is a noun.
How do you pronounce goropism?
Goropism is pronounced /ɡəˈɹəʊpɪzm̩/ (UK).
What is the plural of goropism?
The plural of goropism is goropisms.

Words near goropism in the dictionary

  1. Goroke
  2. Gorol
  3. Goroll
  4. Gorontalo
  5. Gorontaloan
  6. goropism
  7. goropisms
  8. Gorospe
  9. Gorospes
  10. Gorostieta
  11. Gorostietas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: goropism (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-goropism.wav.

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