mentalese

Syllables: ment·al·ese/ˌmɛnt(ə)lˈiːz/US/ˌmɛn(t)l̩ˈiz/

mentalese noun: a hypothetical non-verbal language in which concepts are represented in the mind.

Noun (1)

mentalese (usually uncountable, plural mentaleses)

(usually) A hypothetical non-verbal language in which concepts are represented in the mind.
- The concept of a proposition as something that can be expressed by sentences in both Mentalese and, say, English is an analogical extension of the concept of a proposition as something that can be expressed by sentences in both English and German.1964 November 12, Wilfrid Sellars, “Notes on Intentionality”, in The Journal of Philosophy, volume LXI, number 21, New York, N.Y.: The Journal of Philosophy, →DOI, →ISSN, →JSTOR, →OCLC, page 657
- Translationists are said to treat the coding of thoughts in ‘Mentalese’, whose structure is already known, into a natural language, just like translating a natural language, say Russian, in terms of another known language, say English (G 282). Incorporationists point out the circularity of (36b)...1977, P. G. Patel, “The Left Parieto-temporo-occipital Junction, Semantic Aphasia and Language Development around Age Seven”, in Linguistics: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences...

Mentalese (usually uncountable, plural Mentaleses)

(usually) Alternative letter-case form of mentalese.
- The concept of a proposition as something that can be expressed by sentences in both Mentalese and, say, English is an analogical extension of the concept of a proposition as something that can be expressed by sentences in both English and German.1964 November 12, Wilfrid Sellars, “Notes on Intentionality”, in The Journal of Philosophy, volume LXI, number 21, New York, N.Y.: The Journal of Philosophy, →DOI, →ISSN, →JSTOR, →OCLC, page 657
- Translationists are said to treat the coding of thoughts in ‘Mentalese’, whose structure is already known, into a natural language, just like translating a natural language, say Russian, in terms of another known language, say English (G 282). Incorporationists point out the circularity of (36b)...1977, P. G. Patel, “The Left Parieto-temporo-occipital Junction, Semantic Aphasia and Language Development around Age Seven”, in Linguistics: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences...

If it is learned, then what is it related to in the preceding mentaleses?1979, Gavriel Salomon, “Cultivation of Mental Skills through Symbolic Forms”, in Interaction of Media, Cognition, and Learning: An...
[A]re natural languages merely vehicles for the communication of mentalese?1990, Patrick de Gramont, “The Problem of Representation”, in Language and the Distortion of Meaning (Psychoanalytic Crosscurrents), New...
[I]t is probably misleading to talk about the language of thought, or to talk about ‘Mentalese’, as if it were a single representational system.2006, Peter Carruthers, “The Case for Massively Modular Models of Mind”, in The Architecture of the Mind: Massive Modularity and the...

From mental + -ese (suffix forming adjectives and nouns describing, among other things, languages).

What does mentalese mean?: Mentalese means a hypothetical non-verbal language in which concepts are represented in the mind.
How do you use mentalese in a sentence?: If it is learned, then what is it related to in the preceding mentaleses?
What part of speech is mentalese?: Mentalese is a noun.
How do you pronounce mentalese?: Mentalese is pronounced /ˌmɛnt(ə)lˈiːz/ (UK).
What is the plural of mentalese?: The plural of mentalese is mentaleses.

Adapted from Wiktionary: mentalese (page history and authors); Mentalese (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-uk-mentalese.oga.

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