Copyism
noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A style based on slavish imitation, without character or originality. archaic, countable, uncountable
"There is no genial infusion of the principles of design, no appeal to the imagination, no initiation into art as such, but only a dry, hard copyism of model drawings, line by line, and shade by shade."
- 2 plagiarism archaic, countable, uncountable
"Now, in charging an author, more particularly a poet, with copyism, the resemblance ought surely to be at least as marked as in the foregoing extract."
Example
More examples"There is no genial infusion of the principles of design, no appeal to the imagination, no initiation into art as such, but only a dry, hard copyism of model drawings, line by line, and shade by shade."
Etymology
From copy + -ism.
More for "copyism"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.