Word.ws English Dictionary

prescriptivists

prescriptivists is the plural of prescriptivist.

Meaning of prescriptivist

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

See all 2 meanings of prescriptivist

Questions about prescriptivists

What is prescriptivists the plural of?
Prescriptivists is the plural of prescriptivist.

Words near prescriptivists in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prescriptivists (page history and authors); 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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