syncreticism

Noun

syncretism (countable and uncountable, plural syncretisms)

1. The reconciliation or fusion of different systems or beliefs (religious, cultural, or otherwise cosmologic or ontologic).
   • Having thus established his trinity of hypotheses, M. Lamennais deduces therefrom, by a badly connected chain of analogies, his whole philosophy. And it is here especially that we notice the syncretism which is peculiar to him. The theory of M. Lamennais embraces all systems, and supports all...1876 [1840], “Second Memoir”, in Benjamin R. Tucker, transl., What is Property?, translation of Qu'est-ce que la propriété ? by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

   Synonyms:

   syncresis

2. The fusion of different inflexional forms.
   • In this paper a distinction is assumed between full syncretism, which affects whole morphemes, and partial syncretism, which affects only some case allomorphs, and also between syncretism proper and mere loss of a case morpheme.1993, Robert Coleman, “Patterns of Syncretism in Indo-European”, in Henk Aertsen, Robert J. Jeffers, editors, Historical Linguistics 1989: Papers from the 9th International Conference, John Benjamins...