Definitionism
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The school of thought that for a theory to be properly explained it is necessary that all concepts used by the theory be well-defined. uncountable
"1992, William R. LaFleur, Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan, Princeton University Press, page 15, Quoted in 2015, Adam C. Pelser, Robert C. Roberts, 18: Religious value and moral psychology, Tobias Brosch, David Sander (editors), Handbook of Value, Oxford University Press, page 388, Instead of logic chopping and the unconnected neat boxes produced by definitionism, ritual provides activities that fuse a wide variety of things that seem otherwise unrelated."
Example
More examples"1992, William R. LaFleur, Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan, Princeton University Press, page 15, Quoted in 2015, Adam C. Pelser, Robert C. Roberts, 18: Religious value and moral psychology, Tobias Brosch, David Sander (editors), Handbook of Value, Oxford University Press, page 388, Instead of logic chopping and the unconnected neat boxes produced by definitionism, ritual provides activities that fuse a wide variety of things that seem otherwise unrelated."
Etymology
From definition + -ism.
Related phrases
More for "definitionism"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.