Owlism
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Affected or pretentious wisdom; pompous dullness; bombast. uncountable
"Their Owlisms, Vulturisms, to an incredible extent, will disappear by and by, their Heroisms only remaining, and the helmet be reduced to something like the size of the head, we hope!"
- 2 Owlishness; pompous pseudo-intellectual nature or behavior. uncountable
"If the happiness of men depended as much upon the efficiency of agencies for the "mental discipline" and "culture" of women as it does upon their housewifely ability, the owlism would have been punched out of a score of very respectable studies long ago."
- 3 The identification with and/or worship of owls. uncountable
"The book discusses the habits and rituals of these people-owls and explores the nature of <<owlism>>, which exposes the archaic and occult roots of the 20th century totalitarian systems ."
- 4 Night-owlism. uncountable
"Her owlism and his larkism are mild forms of circadian-rhythm glitches known as delayed- and advanced- sleep phase syndromes."
Example
More examples"Their Owlisms, Vulturisms, to an incredible extent, will disappear by and by, their Heroisms only remaining, and the helmet be reduced to something like the size of the head, we hope!"
Etymology
From owl + -ism.
More for "owlism"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.