"Humpty Dumptyism" meaning in English

See Humpty Dumptyism in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-Humpty Dumptyism.ogg Forms: Humpty-Dumptyism [alternative]
Etymology: From Humpty Dumpty + -ism, after the fictional character in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, who, when asked what he meant by glory, replies, "I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'" Alice protests that this isn't the meaning of glory and Humpty Dumpty replies, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean——neither more nor less." Etymology templates: {{suffix|en|Humpty Dumpty|ism}} Humpty Dumpty + -ism Head templates: {{en-noun|-|nolinkhead=1}} Humpty Dumptyism (uncountable)
  1. (idiomatic) The practice of insisting that a word means whatever one wishes it to. Wikipedia link: Humpty Dumptyism, Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass Tags: idiomatic, uncountable Related terms: Humpty Dumpty word

Alternative forms

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-03-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-03-21 using wiktextract (fef8596 and 633533e). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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