noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The phenomenon of people speaking several languages at a low level of development, with evident deficiencies in all languages. uncountable

Etymology

From semilingual + -ism, introduced by a Swedish researcher Hansegård N. E. in 1975.

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