Word.ws English Dictionary

pseudoneologism

pseudoneologism noun: a word or expression that appears to be a neologism, but is actually either not genuinely new or is a pseudoform derived from existing linguistic elements.

Noun

pseudoneologism (plural pseudoneologisms)

  1. A word or expression that appears to be a neologism, but is actually either not genuinely new or is a pseudoform derived from existing linguistic elements.
    • A veritable lexicon of pseudoneologisms serves as the most subtle currency of this "givenness of the wrong word" in Beckett's prose. Throughout the work, arcane diction such as "dimmen," "strangury," "collapsion," "scrute" abounds. By their juxtaposition with perfectly colloquial idioms, these...2003, Alan Singer, Aesthetic Reason: Artworks and the Deliberative Ethos, University Park, P.A.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, →ISBN, page 94

Forms of pseudoneologism

pluralpseudoneologisms

Origin of pseudoneologism

From pseudo- + neologism.

Questions about pseudoneologism

What does pseudoneologism mean?
Pseudoneologism means a word or expression that appears to be a neologism, but is actually either not genuinely new or is a pseudoform derived from existing linguistic elements.
What part of speech is pseudoneologism?
Pseudoneologism is a noun.
What is the plural of pseudoneologism?
The plural of pseudoneologism is pseudoneologisms.

Words near pseudoneologism in the dictionary

  1. pseudonaviculas
  2. pseudoneck
  3. pseudonecks
  4. pseudonegative
  5. pseudoneglect
  6. pseudoneologism
  7. pseudoneologisms
  8. pseudoneonatal
  9. pseudoneuritic
  10. pseudoneuritis
  11. pseudoneurological

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pseudoneologism (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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