Word.ws English Dictionary

philosophism

philosophism noun: spurious philosophy; the love or practice of sophistry.

Noun

philosophism (countable and uncountable, plural philosophisms)

  1. spurious philosophy; the love or practice of sophistry
    • French Philosophism has arisen; in which little word how much do we include! Here, indeed, lies properly the cardinal symptom of the whole wide-spread malady. Faith is gone out; Scepticism is come in.1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, (please specify the book or page number)
    • French "philosophism" led to scepticism and on to atheism, but worse still, it discredited as chimera anything not immediately “logical” or tangible, leaving the human being without a spiritual rock to anchor a moral compass.2019, Maike Oergel, Zeitgeist – How Ideas Travel, page 213

Forms of philosophism

pluralphilosophisms

Origin of philosophism

Compare French philosophisme.

Questions about philosophism

What does philosophism mean?
Philosophism means spurious philosophy; the love or practice of sophistry.
What part of speech is philosophism?
Philosophism is a noun.
What is the plural of philosophism?
The plural of philosophism is philosophisms.

Words near philosophism in the dictionary

  1. philosophiser
  2. philosophisers
  3. philosophises
  4. philosophising
  5. philosophisings
  6. philosophism
  7. philosophisms
  8. philosophist
  9. philosophistic
  10. philosophistical
  11. philosophists

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: philosophism (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “philosophism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/philosophism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.