paleologism

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Definition of paleologism

2 senses · 1 part of speech · etymology included

noun

A word or phrase that was coined in the distant past, often now obscured or offensive, or if recently used: possibly having a definition or implication different from that of any earlier usage.

“Another is the paleologism of pars pro toto in which a part of an organ or function can symbolize the whole organ or concept; eg, the stomach may be the locus of difficulty with a patient with a history of frustrated dependency needs because of its association with the process of being fed and loved by the mother.”
“Levinas seems to be offering new words or newly burnished words for old, those apparent semantic neologisms are more like pre-semantic paleologisms.”
“The word trust is in no way a neologism. On the contrary, it is a kind of paleologism, a primitive signifier, "a word from a barbarian time."”

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noun

A word or phrase that was coined in the distant past, often now obscured or offensive, or if recently used: possibly having a definition or implication different from that of any earlier usage.

“Another is the paleologism of pars pro toto in which a part of an organ or function can symbolize the whole organ or concept; eg, the stomach may be the locus of difficulty with a patient with a history of frustrated dependency needs because of its association with the process of being fed and loved by the mother.”
“Levinas seems to be offering new words or newly burnished words for old, those apparent semantic neologisms are more like pre-semantic paleologisms.”
“The word trust is in no way a neologism. On the contrary, it is a kind of paleologism, a primitive signifier, "a word from a barbarian time."”
An obsolete term.

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

From paleo- + -logism, from Ancient Greek: παλαιός (palaiós, “old”) in combination with λόγος (lógos, “word”).

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