Word.ws English Dictionary

hyphenism

hyphenism noun: the use of hyphenated terms to describe people's identities, e.g. in Irish-American.

Noun

hyphenism (countable and uncountable, plural hyphenisms)

  1. The use of hyphenated terms to describe people's identities, e.g. in Irish-American.
    • What may be called, for want of a better term, the colonial spirit, which is the essence of hyphenism, has persisted in this country to hamper national progress and national unity.1924, Edward F. McSweeney, The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America, page 2

Forms of hyphenism

pluralhyphenisms

Origin of hyphenism

From hyphen + -ism.

Questions about hyphenism

What does hyphenism mean?
Hyphenism means the use of hyphenated terms to describe people's identities, e.g. in Irish-American.
What part of speech is hyphenism?
Hyphenism is a noun.
What is the plural of hyphenism?
The plural of hyphenism is hyphenisms.

Words near hyphenism in the dictionary

  1. hyphened
  2. hyphenic
  3. hyphening
  4. hyphenisation
  5. hyphenise
  6. hyphenism
  7. hyphenisms
  8. hyphenitis
  9. hyphenization
  10. hyphenizations
  11. hyphenize

Source and license

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