polypragmatisms

Noun

polypragmatism (countable and uncountable, plural polypragmatisms)

1. The approach of trying various possible therapeutic treatments with no clear diagnostic guide.
   • Why interfere with a self-limited condition unless some unusual feature, a danger sign, makes its appearance? Polypragmatism was always ridiculous. Is it not polypragmatism if we do something useless, unnecessary, uncalled for?1933, Heinrich Franz Wolf, Textbook of Physical Therapy, page xi
2. (broadly) The use of multiple approaches to a single issue.
   • It would appear, on the whole, that the country is going through a very natural transition-period after the blossoming-time from Bellman to Runeberg, and that the present or recent literary activity is mainly on the surface, and of no particular importance. Perhaps this might be said of the...1907, George Saintsbury, The Later 19th Century, page 327
3. The application of a single approach or solution to multiple problems.
   • Its prima facie presence can be immediately grasped in the controlled critical judgments of a Polybius or a Plutarch or a Sophocles attempting to penetrate to the causes of the most dense phenomenon, human polypragmatism. It is present in equal measure in Demosthenes' oration, "On the Crown," and...1983, George Ernest Wright, The Biblical Archaeologist - Volume 46, page 35
4. A tendency toward meddling or officiousness.
   • Further, Balzac's polypragmatism on the one hand, and that tendency to careful and official preservation of all business documents which the French have inherited from their Roman lords on the other, made it pretty certain that fresh matter would turn up.1907, The Living Age - Volume 252, page 707