Defaultist

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    One who believes that scalar implicatures arise from a default association with a word, rather than arising from contextual inference.

    "A defaultist believes that the default interpretation of the phrase "some eels are fish" is the pragmatic interpretation "some, but not all, eels are fish"."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Of or relating to defaultism. not-comparable

Example

More examples

"A defaultist believes that the default interpretation of the phrase "some eels are fish" is the pragmatic interpretation "some, but not all, eels are fish"."

Etymology

From default + -ist.

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