Word.ws English Dictionary

paleologism

paleologism noun: a word or phrase that was coined in the distant past, often now obscured or offensive, or if recently used: possibly having a definition or implication different from that of any earlier usage.

Noun

paleologism (plural paleologisms)

  1. A word or phrase that was coined in the distant past, often now obscured or offensive, or if recently used: possibly having a definition or implication different from that of any earlier usage.
    • Another is the paleologism of pars pro toto in which a part of an organ or function can symbolize the whole organ or concept; eg, the stomach may be the locus of difficulty with a patient with a history of frustrated dependency needs because of its association with the process of being fed and...1964, Charles William Wahl, New Dimensions in Psychosomatic Medicine, page 41
    • Levinas seems to be offering new words or newly burnished words for old, those apparent semantic neologisms are more like pre-semantic paleologisms.1995, John Llewelyn, Emmanuel Levinas: The Genealogy of Ethics, →ISBN, page 163
  2. An obsolete term.

Antonyms of paleologism

Forms of paleologism

pluralpaleologisms
alternative formpalaeologism
alternative formpalæologism

Origin of paleologism

From paleo- + -logism, from Ancient Greek: παλαιός (palaiós, “old”) in combination with λόγος (lógos, “word”).

Questions about paleologism

What does paleologism mean?
Paleologism means a word or phrase that was coined in the distant past, often now obscured or offensive, or if recently used: possibly having a definition or implication different from that of any earlier usage.
What part of speech is paleologism?
Paleologism is a noun.
What is the plural of paleologism?
The plural of paleologism is paleologisms.

Words near paleologism in the dictionary

  1. paleolithic
  2. paleolithical
  3. paleoliths
  4. paleologic
  5. paleological
  6. paleologism
  7. paleologisms
  8. paleologist
  9. paleologists
  10. paleology
  11. paleolongitude

Source and license

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