descriptivism
noun
descriptivism is a noun meaning “The practice of describing realistic forms, as opposed to prescribing idealistic norms, of linguistic usage” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled D-E-S-C-R-I-P-T-I-V-I-S-M, and it appears about once in every 79 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of descriptivism is descriptivisms.
What does descriptivism mean?
noun
- 1
The practice of describing realistic forms, as opposed to prescribing idealistic norms, of linguistic usage.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of descriptivism
- descriptivisms plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is descriptivism?
Descriptivism appears about once in every 79 million words in written English, the 282,993rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Descriptivism in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense describing realistic language forms:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | descriptivisme |
| German | Deskriptivismus, deskriptive Linguistik |
| Portuguese | descritivismo |
| Spanish | descriptivismo |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does descriptivism come from?
From descriptive + -ism. Audio (Southern England): (file)
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).