Linguism

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Discrimination based on a person's language. uncountable
  2. 2
    Competition among or unequal treatment of languages and their speaker communities. uncountable

    "1971 David D. Anderson, "Ahmed Ali and Twilight in Delhi: The genesis of a Pakistani novel," MAHFIL: A.Quarterly of South Asian Literature, Spring-Summer 1971. This time, however, the controversy […] dealt with linguism, the problem of, the multiplicity of competing languages in the subcontinent as well as the cultural and political, overtones of the continuing competition among them."

  3. 3
    Conversance with, or predilection for, (foreign) languages uncountable
  4. 4
    Advocacy of languages on a regional basis uncountable

Example

More examples

"1971 David D. Anderson, "Ahmed Ali and Twilight in Delhi: The genesis of a Pakistani novel," MAHFIL: A.Quarterly of South Asian Literature, Spring-Summer 1971. This time, however, the controversy […] dealt with linguism, the problem of, the multiplicity of competing languages in the subcontinent as well as the cultural and political, overtones of the continuing competition among them."

Etymology

Back-formation from linguist + -ism.

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