Word.ws English Dictionary

heteroglossia

heteroglossia noun: the coexistence of distinct linguistic varieties, styles of discourse, or points of view within a single language, as in a literary work.

Noun

heteroglossia (uncountable)

  1. The coexistence of distinct linguistic varieties, styles of discourse, or points of view within a single language, as in a literary work.
    • A superficial impression of Asia may be of disorder, whereas this condition is in fact the immediate historicity that speaks for an undertheorised heteroglossia.2017, Francis Chia-Hui Lin, Architectural Theorisations and Phenomena in Asia, page 194

Origin of heteroglossia

From hetero- + -glossia.

Questions about heteroglossia

What does heteroglossia mean?
Heteroglossia means the coexistence of distinct linguistic varieties, styles of discourse, or points of view within a single language, as in a literary work.
What part of speech is heteroglossia?
Heteroglossia is a noun.

Words near heteroglossia in the dictionary

  1. heterogenotypes
  2. heterogenous
  3. heterogenously
  4. heterogeny
  5. heterogloss
  6. heteroglossia
  7. heteroglossic
  8. heteroglot
  9. heteroglots
  10. heteroglucan
  11. heteroglucans

Source and license

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