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