Word.ws English Dictionary

privilegism

privilegism noun: a social system in which some people have privileges that others do not.

Noun

privilegism (uncountable)

  1. A social system in which some people have privileges that others do not.
    • Again it is clear that Morris, carrying through his ideas of historic evolution, believes that privilegism (or oligarchy) on which most societies have sooner or later come to be based, and on which they have sooner or later fallen, must […]1968, Lloyd Wendell Eshleman, William Morris: Prophet of England's New Order, page 317
    • Clientelism, privilegism, and “every-man-for-himself-ism” converged, for example, within an increasingly degraded administrative environment, towards growing general contempt for the anonymous user […]2009, Giorgio Blundo, Pierre-Yves Le Meur, The Governance of Daily Life in Africa, page 66

Origin of privilegism

From privilege + -ism.

Questions about privilegism

What does privilegism mean?
Privilegism means a social system in which some people have privileges that others do not.
What part of speech is privilegism?
Privilegism is a noun.

Words near privilegism in the dictionary

  1. privilegers
  2. privileges
  3. privilegiado
  4. privileging
  5. privilegings
  6. privilegism
  7. privily
  8. priviness
  9. privish
  10. privished
  11. privishes

Source and license

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