Word.ws English Dictionary

perinormal

perinormal adjective: prepathological; lying between normal and pathological.

Adjective

perinormal (not comparable)

  1. Prepathological; lying between normal and pathological.
  2. Having previously been thought to be a paranormal phenomenon, but having since been scientifically verified as natural.
    • The eventual acceptance by the scientific community and incorporation into the mainstream of science of phenomena that were once considered paranormal and then perinormal (e.g., hypnotism).2007 March 3, Sam Vaknin, Ph.D., “Parapsychology and the Paranormal”, The Paranormal & Ghost Society, Google Groups

Origin of perinormal

From peri- + normal. Sense 2: by analogy with paranormal, and apparently coined by Richard Dawkins, though he does not claim to have been its sole originator.

Questions about perinormal

What does perinormal mean?
Perinormal means prepathological; lying between normal and pathological.
What part of speech is perinormal?
Perinormal is an adjective.

Words near perinormal in the dictionary

  1. perinexus
  2. perinigricon
  3. Perino
  4. perinodal
  5. perinodular
  6. perinormal
  7. Perinos
  8. perinotochordal
  9. Perins
  10. perinsular
  11. perintegrate

Source and license

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