Word.ws English Dictionary

occasionalism

occasionalism noun: a metaphysical doctrine that holds that all events are occasioned (caused) by God.

Noun

occasionalism (countable and uncountable, plural occasionalisms)

  1. (uncountable) A metaphysical doctrine that holds that all events are occasioned (caused) by God.
  2. (countable) A nonce word.
    • This measure stems from the observation that productive morphological rules are likely to produce occasionalisms, whereas unproductive rules are not likely to do so. Occasionalisms are thus particularly important for determining productivity.2010, Martin Haspelmath, Andrea D. Sims, Understanding Morphology, second edition, page 130

Forms of occasionalism

pluraloccasionalisms

Origin of occasionalism

From occasional + -ism.

Questions about occasionalism

What does occasionalism mean?
Occasionalism means a metaphysical doctrine that holds that all events are occasioned (caused) by God.
What part of speech is occasionalism?
Occasionalism is a noun.
What is the plural of occasionalism?
The plural of occasionalism is occasionalisms.

Words near occasionalism in the dictionary

  1. occasional bookcase
  2. occasional bookcases
  3. occasional furniture
  4. occasional table
  5. occasional tables
  6. occasionalism
  7. occasionalisms
  8. occasionalist
  9. occasionalistic
  10. occasionalists
  11. occasionality

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: occasionalism (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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