Word.ws English Dictionary

knee-jerkism

knee-jerkism noun: knee-jerk behavior.

Noun

knee-jerkism (uncountable)

  1. Knee-jerk behavior.
    • Not every rock dinosaur reacted with such ill-conceived knee-jerkism.2010, Clinton Heylin, Bootleg! The Rise And Fall Of The Secret Recording Industry

Origin of knee-jerkism

From knee-jerk + -ism.

Questions about knee-jerkism

What does knee-jerkism mean?
Knee-jerkism means knee-jerk behavior.
What part of speech is knee-jerkism?
Knee-jerkism is a noun.

Words near knee-jerkism in the dictionary

  1. knee-jerk reactions
  2. knee-jerkery
  3. knee-jerking
  4. knee-jerkish
  5. knee-jerkishly
  6. knee-jerkism
  7. knee-jerks
  8. knee-jerky
  9. knee-length
  10. knee-pad
  11. knee-paddle

Source and license

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