Bicameralism

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The practice of dividing legislative bodies into two chambers with complementary powers and limitations designed to provide checks and balances against one another. uncountable, usually
  2. 2
    Ambiguous misnomer for Julian Jaynes's theory of bicamerality, probably never used by Jaynes, rarely used in academic literature based on his work, but often found informally (compare bicameral mind and bicameral mentality) uncountable, usually

    "1978, Edward Proffitt, "Romanticism, Bicamerality, and the Evolution of the Brain", The Wordsworth Circle, Vol. 9, No.1, reprinted with permission in Kuijsten, 2016, page 134. Coleridge...could not revert to bicameralism either."

Synonyms

All synonyms
tricameralismunicameralism

Example

More examples

"1978, Edward Proffitt, "Romanticism, Bicamerality, and the Evolution of the Brain", The Wordsworth Circle, Vol. 9, No.1, reprinted with permission in Kuijsten, 2016, page 134. Coleridge...could not revert to bicameralism either."

Etymology

From bicameral + -ism.

Related phrases

checks and balancesdecision making

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.