Word.ws English Dictionary

rubricism

rubricism noun: a pedantic or scrupulous emphasis on following rubrics, that is, written directions and regulations, in celebrating the liturgy.

Noun

rubricism (uncountable)

  1. (derogatory) A pedantic or scrupulous emphasis on following rubrics, that is, written directions and regulations, in celebrating the liturgy.
    • […] finally both were wedded to an extreme high-church theory of discipline and doctrine, John Wesley being quite as far gone in this respect in 1735 as Newman himself was in 1835,—and indeed carrying his rigid rubricism and his asceticism very much farther than the Tractarians at any time carried...1864 October, “Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Newman”, in The London Quarterly Review, volume 23, number 45, page 148
    • Theodor Klauser, author of perhaps the most widely read general account of the project, did not help matters when he described the liturgy of the period from Trent to St Pius X (Pope, 1903–14) in terms of rigid unification […] and rubricism.1995, Simon Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy: Pietro Maria Campi and the Preservation of the Particular, →ISBN, page 19

Origin of rubricism

From rubric + -ism.

Questions about rubricism

What does rubricism mean?
Rubricism means a pedantic or scrupulous emphasis on following rubrics, that is, written directions and regulations, in celebrating the liturgy.
What part of speech is rubricism?
Rubricism is a noun.

Words near rubricism in the dictionary

  1. rubrications
  2. rubricator
  3. rubricators
  4. rubrician
  5. rubricians
  6. rubricism
  7. rubricist
  8. rubricists
  9. rubricity
  10. rubrick
  11. rubricked

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rubricism (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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