Word.ws English Dictionary

prescriptivist

/pɹəˈskɹɪp.tɪ.vɪst/

prescriptivist noun: someone who lays down rules regarding language usage, or who believes that traditional norms of language usage should be upheld.

Noun

prescriptivist (plural prescriptivists)

  1. Someone who lays down rules regarding language usage, or who believes that traditional norms of language usage should be upheld.
    • The plutocratic tone and styptic wit of Safire and Newman and the best of the Prescriptivists is often modeled after the mandarin-Brit personas of Eric Partridge and H. W. Fowler, the same Twin Towers of scholarly Prescriptivism whom Garner talks about revering as a kid.2001 April, David Foster Wallace, “Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage”, in Harper's Magazine

Adjective

prescriptivist (comparative more prescriptivist, superlative most prescriptivist)

  1. Having a tendency to prescribe.
    • In short, they tend to present Indian English as nothing more than "standard" English with a select collection of lexical peculiarities tacked on, as it were, many of which would be regarded as "errors" by prescriptivist language scholars.2012, James Lambert, “Beyond Hobson-Jobson: A new lexicography for Indian English”, in World Englishes, page 312

Synonyms of prescriptivist

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of prescriptivist

Forms of prescriptivist

Noun
pluralprescriptivists
Adjective
comparativemore prescriptivist
superlativemost prescriptivist

Origin of prescriptivist

From prescriptive + -ist.

Questions about prescriptivist

What does prescriptivist mean?
Prescriptivist means someone who lays down rules regarding language usage, or who believes that traditional norms of language usage should be upheld.
What part of speech is prescriptivist?
Prescriptivist can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce prescriptivist?
Prescriptivist is pronounced /pɹəˈskɹɪp.tɪ.vɪst/.
What is the plural of prescriptivist?
The plural of prescriptivist is prescriptivists.

Words near prescriptivist in the dictionary

  1. prescriptive
  2. prescriptively
  3. prescriptiveness
  4. prescriptivism
  5. prescriptivisms
  6. prescriptivist
  7. prescriptivistic
  8. prescriptivists
  9. prescriptivity
  10. prescriptorial
  11. prescripts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prescriptivist (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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