Word.ws English Dictionary

paternalisms

paternalisms is the plural of paternalism.

Meaning of paternalism

Noun

paternalism (countable and uncountable, plural paternalisms)

  1. The treatment of people in a fatherly manner, especially by caring for them and sometimes being stern with them.
    • Libertarian paternalism is the view that, because the way options are presented to citizens affects what they choose, society should present options in a way that “nudges” our intuitive selves to make choices that are more consistent with what our more deliberative selves would have chosen if they...2012 January, Steven Sloman, “The Battle Between Intuition and Deliberation”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 08 Jan 2012, page 74
  2. The guiding of people in a manner that limits their autonomy in the name of their own well-being.

Questions about paternalisms

What is paternalisms the plural of?
Paternalisms is the plural of paternalism.

Words near paternalisms in the dictionary

  1. paternalise
  2. paternalised
  3. paternalises
  4. paternalising
  5. paternalism
  6. paternalisms
  7. paternalist
  8. paternalistic
  9. paternalistically
  10. paternalists
  11. paternality

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: paternalisms (page history and authors); paternalism (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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