Polysyllabism

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The state or characteristic of having or using words containing multiple syllables, sometimes as a stage in the development of language. uncountable, usually

    "1936, Martin Joos, "Book Review: The Psycho-Biology of Language by George K. Zipf," Language, vol. 12, no. 3 (July/Sep), p. 202, Chinese polysyllabism is a sort of synthesis, or aggregation, or 'addition' of morphemes and their meanings."

  2. 2
    Polysyllabicism. uncountable, usually

    "Cumbrous compounds are formed as the names of objects and a character of tedious and time-wasting polysyllabism is given to the language."

Synonyms

All synonyms
mouthful

Example

More examples

"1936, Martin Joos, "Book Review: The Psycho-Biology of Language by George K. Zipf," Language, vol. 12, no. 3 (July/Sep), p. 202, Chinese polysyllabism is a sort of synthesis, or aggregation, or 'addition' of morphemes and their meanings."

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