Word.ws English Dictionary

linguism

linguism noun: discrimination based on a person's language.

Noun

linguism (uncountable)

  1. Discrimination based on a person's language.
  2. Competition among or unequal treatment of languages and their speaker communities.
    • This time, however, the controversy […] dealt with linguism, the problem of, the multiplicity of competing languages in the subcontinent as well as the cultural and political, overtones of the continuing competition among them.1971 David D. Anderson, "Ahmed Ali and Twilight in Delhi: The genesis of a Pakistani novel," MAHFIL: A.Quarterly of South Asian Literature, Spring-Summer 1971.
  3. Conversance with, or predilection for, (foreign) languages
  4. Advocacy of languages on a regional basis

Origin of linguism

Back-formation from linguist + -ism.

Questions about linguism

What does linguism mean?
Linguism means discrimination based on a person's language.
What part of speech is linguism?
Linguism is a noun.

Words near linguism in the dictionary

  1. linguines
  2. linguini
  3. linguinilike
  4. linguinis
  5. linguipotence
  6. linguism
  7. linguist
  8. linguister
  9. linguisters
  10. linguistic
  11. linguistic anthropology

Source and license

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