Word.ws English Dictionary

southernisms

southernisms is the plural of southernism.

Meaning of southernism

Noun

southernism (countable and uncountable, plural southernisms)

  1. 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
  2. (rhetoric) 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

Questions about southernisms

What is southernisms the plural of?
Southernisms is the plural of southernism.

Words near southernisms in the dictionary

  1. southernised
  2. southernises
  3. southernish
  4. southernising
  5. southernism
  6. southernisms
  7. southernist
  8. southernists
  9. southernization
  10. southernize
  11. southernized

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: southernisms (page history and authors); 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: “southernisms.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/southernisms. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.