Pseudo-linguistics

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Work purporting to fall under the scholarly field of linguistics but falling short of its standards; linguistic pseudo-scholarship. uncountable

    "Roy Medvedev deals with the less known but even odder pseudo-linguistics of Nikolai Marr."

Example

More examples

"Roy Medvedev deals with the less known but even odder pseudo-linguistics of Nikolai Marr."

Etymology

From pseudo- + linguistics. First attested 1962 (OED). Modelled on the earlier adjective pseudolinguistic (as in "pseudolinguistic science", attested 1915).

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