mycterisms

Noun

mycterism (plural mycterisms)

1. (rare, rhetoric) A subtle or scornful jibe.
   • But he recovers himself soon, if only by the dry fashion in which he observes that, if anybody does not know it, the Greeks call certain kinds of allegory sarcasm, asteism, antiphasis, and parœmia, to which it may be well to at mycterism, a kind of derision which is dissembled, but not altogether...1922, George Saintsbury, A history of criticism and literary taste in Europe from the earliest texts to the present day, page 301