Meaning of paleologism | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A word or phrase that was coined in the distant past, often now obscured or offensive, or if recently used: possibly having a definition or implication different from that of any earlier usage.
2. An obsolete term.

Equivalents

Examples

“Another is the paleologism of pars pro toto in which a part of an organ or function can symbolize the whole organ or concept; eg, the stomach may be the locus of difficulty with a patient with a history of frustrated dependency needs because of its association with the process of being fed and loved by the mother.”

“Levinas seems to be offering new words or newly burnished words for old, those apparent semantic neologisms are more like pre-semantic paleologisms.”

“The word trust is in no way a neologism. On the contrary, it is a kind of paleologism, a primitive signifier, "a word from a barbarian time."”

CEFR level