goropisms

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...
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...