Word.ws English Dictionary

uniformitarianism

UK/juːnɪfɔːmɪˈtɛːɹɪənɪzm/

uniformitarianism noun: the scientific principle that natural laws and processes operated in the past in the same way and at the same rates that they operate today, and sometimes in the same way everywhere in the universe as well.

Noun

uniformitarianism (uncountable)

  1. The scientific principle that natural laws and processes operated in the past in the same way and at the same rates that they operate today, and sometimes in the same way everywhere in the universe as well.
    • There has been much puffy stuff written about whether Lyell's uniformitarianism permitted variations in intensity of causes, or whether he applied his logic in a consistent way, and whether he assumed indefinite stretches of geological time.2004, Richard Fortey, The Earth, Folio Society, published 2011, page 20

Antonyms of uniformitarianism

Origin of uniformitarianism

From uniformitarian + -ism, coined by English polymath William Whewell in 1837.

Questions about uniformitarianism

What does uniformitarianism mean?
Uniformitarianism means the scientific principle that natural laws and processes operated in the past in the same way and at the same rates that they operate today, and sometimes in the same way everywhere in the universe as well.
What part of speech is uniformitarianism?
Uniformitarianism is a noun.
How do you pronounce uniformitarianism?
Uniformitarianism is pronounced /juːnɪfɔːmɪˈtɛːɹɪənɪzm/ (UK).

Words near uniformitarianism in the dictionary

  1. uniformising
  2. uniformism
  3. uniformist
  4. uniformists
  5. uniformitarian
  6. uniformitarianism
  7. uniformitarianist
  8. uniformitarianistic
  9. uniformitarianists
  10. uniformitarians
  11. uniformities

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: uniformitarianism (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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