Proxemics

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The study of the effects of the physical distance between people in different cultures and societies. uncountable

    "Proxemics refers to the personal distance that individuals prefer to keep between themselves and other individuals and is an important element of nonverbal communication."

  2. 2
    the study of spatial distances between individuals in different cultures and situations wordnet

Example

More examples

"Proxemics refers to the personal distance that individuals prefer to keep between themselves and other individuals and is an important element of nonverbal communication."

Etymology

From prox- + -emics (as in phonemics). Coined by American anthropologist Edward T. Hall in 1963.

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