southernism
southernism noun: anything characteristic of the southern part of a region, especially the southern United States.
Noun
southernism (countable and uncountable, plural southernisms)
- Anything characteristic of the southern part of a region, especially the southern United States.
- It is one of the national peccadilloes that anyone who lives north of St. Albans has some kind of prejudice against Londoners — perhaps "prejudice" is the wrong word — or rather not against Londoners but against southernism.1954, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard): House of Commons official report
- A word or phrase (a dialectism) from Southern American English.
- I loved his languid, Southern speech and little southernisms, like "you can't put a sequin on a rat's ass."1988 April 23, Cindy Patton, “Bob Andrews: A Life Celebration”, in Gay Community News, page 8
- Many are known southernisms in the sense that they are also cited in sources such as Dictionary of American Regional English (henceforth, DARE) or Carver (1987).2015, Michael D. Picone, Catherine Evans Davies, New Perspectives on Language Variety in the South: Historical and Contemporary Approaches, University of Alabama Press, →ISBN, page 169
Forms of southernism
| plural | southernisms |
|---|
Origin of southernism
From southern + -ism.
Questions about southernism
- What does southernism mean?
- Southernism means anything characteristic of the southern part of a region, especially the southern United States.
- What part of speech is southernism?
- Southernism is a noun.
- What is the plural of southernism?
- The plural of southernism is southernisms.
Words near southernism in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: southernism (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: “southernism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/southernism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.