Confusionism

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Any doctrine or philosophy that serves to confuse people. uncountable

    "Yet it is this very proliferation that has induced Stanley Fish to proclaim the imminent demise of theory, a demise whose most telling symptom is precisely the "noise" generated by theory. Commenting on and extending Fish's line of argument, Vincent Descombes argues that we have entered a phase of theoretical confusionism that makes it difficult to determine what theory is."

Example

More examples

"Yet it is this very proliferation that has induced Stanley Fish to proclaim the imminent demise of theory, a demise whose most telling symptom is precisely the "noise" generated by theory. Commenting on and extending Fish's line of argument, Vincent Descombes argues that we have entered a phase of theoretical confusionism that makes it difficult to determine what theory is."

Etymology

From confusion + -ism.

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