Meaning of Atticism | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Attachment to, collaboration with, favouring of, or siding with Athens or Athenians, especially in the context of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.E.).
   uncountable
2. The prestige dialect of Classical Greek, as spoken and written by the inhabitants of Attica (chiefly Athens) in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E.; Attic Greek.
   countable, singular, singular-only, uncountable
3. The enduring rhetorical movement, begun in the 1st century B.C.E., whose members strove to emulate the style of the best Attic orators of that Classical period; especially in contrast with Asianism or Hellenism. (Its leading early proponent, Dionysius of Halicarnassus [c. 60–p. 7 B.C.E.], identified Lysias [c. 445–380 B.C.E.] as “the perfect model of the Attic dialect”, whose virtues he enumerates to be “purity of language, correct dialect, the presentation of ideas by means of standard, not figurative expressions; clarity, brevity, concision, terseness, vivid representation…, the pleasing arrangement of words after the manner of ordinary speech…, charm and a sense of timing which regulates everything else”.)
   countable, singular, singular-only, uncountable
4. The stylistic principles of Greek Atticism in application to other languages, especially to Latin.
   broadly, countable, dated, historical, singular, singular-only, uncountable
5. An expression or idiom characteristic of or peculiar to Attic Greek, especially an elegant and refined, if grammatically irregular, usage.
   countable, singular, singular-only
6. A refined felicity or well-turned phrase, especially one deemed ungrammatical. (In Newcome, aposiopesis, dislocation, and inverse attraction, respectively.)
   broadly, countable, singular, singular-only

Equivalents

Examples

“The ſame Summer, the Thebans demoliſhed the walles of the Theſpians, laying Atticiſme to their charge.”

“〃, § 8.38.3, page 489”

“Lysias and his brother were compelled to quit Thurii on the charge of Atticism (of taking the Athenian side in political questions) and they returned to Athens, which was then under the government of the Four Hundred.”

“By the Cardinals own confeſsion, this Agapetus liued at Conſtantinople in Iuſtinians time: where it was a great matter for him, no doubt, in ſo long time, to learn to make ſuch a Greek booke as this is; which yet for the ſtile and Atticiſmes, comes a great deale ſhort of Baronius commendation.”

“Her mistakes, if [Catalani] makes any, are perceptible only to the musical pedant who thinks a deviation from a scientific canon ill compensated by the most fanciful beauties of execution. Such a man would accuse Thucydides of false grammar on account of his atticisms, or Homer of incorrect quantity for the occasional artful protraction of a short syllable.”

“There while they acted, and overacted, among other young ſcholars, I was a ſpectator; they thought themſelves gallant men, and I thought them fools, they made ſport, and I laught, they miſpronounc’t and I miſlik’t, and to make up the atticiſme, they were out, and I hiſt.”

“There is an elegant Atticiſm which occurs Luke xiii. 9. “If it bear fruit, well.” We find this figure of ſpeech in the Chaldee, Dan. iii. 15; and, I think, in the Hebrew, Exod. xxxii. 32: “Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their ſin, well.””

“As for Ephraim, their glory ſhall flee away as a bird: which…form reſembles Salluſt’s plebs urbana ea vero præceps ierat [Bellum Catilinae 37.4]; and that common Atticiſm, urbem quam ſtatuo, veſtra eſt [Virgil, Aeneid 1.573].”

CEFR level