Holist
adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A believer in, or practitioner of, holism; one who believes that a topic of study cannot be fully understood by studying the parts, or who studies by considering the whole.
"The holists generally claimed that the variety of the clinical pictures was not intrinsic to aphasia, although it was recognized that aphasic patients differ in many respects, not only the severity of the language disorder."
- 2 One who advocates studying society as a whole, and who consistently interprets the actions of individuals in that context.
"Holism is more eclectic in its methods; for most holists, rigor means reconstructing the meaning of an action in the subject's own terms, and interpreting it in light of a richly detailed cultural, social, and historical context."
- 3 One who prefers to learn by forming an overview of the topic.
"Those subjects using a serialist strategy tended to proceed in a step-by-step manner, whereas the holists adopted a more global approach to what was to be learned."
- 1 That concentrates on forming an overview of the topic. not-comparable
"Pask suggests that these strategies reflect basic learning styles; holist strategies reflect a comprehension learning style and serialist strategies an operation learning style."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Pask suggests that these strategies reflect basic learning styles; holist strategies reflect a comprehension learning style and serialist strategies an operation learning style."
Etymology
From hol- + -ist.
Related phrases
More for "holist"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.