Afghanistanism
noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 The practice of concentrating on problems in distant parts of the world while ignoring controversial local issues. countable, uncountable
"I don't wish to belabor this subject of Afghanistanism, this business of taking forthright stands on elections in Costa Rica, while the uncollected local garbage reeks beneath the editor's window."
Example
More examples"I don't wish to belabor this subject of Afghanistanism, this business of taking forthright stands on elections in Costa Rica, while the uncollected local garbage reeks beneath the editor's window."
Etymology
From Afghanistan + -ism. The first recorded use is by Jenkin Lloyd Jones, editor of the Tulsa Tribune, in 1948; see quotation below.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.