abject

en-adj

abject (comparative abjecter or more abject, superlative abjectest or most abject)

abjecter (comparative)
more abject (comparative)
abjectest (superlative)
most abject (superlative)

/ˈæbˌd͡ʒɛkt/

PIE word
 *h₂epó
The adjective is derived from Late Middle English abiect, abject (adjective) [and other forms], from Middle French abject (modern French abject, abjet (obsolete)), and from its etymon Latin abiectus (“abandoned; cast aside”), an adjective use of the perfect passive participle of abiciō (“to discard, throw away”), from ab- (prefix meaning ‘away from’) + iaciō (“to throw”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(H)yeh₁- (“to throw”)).
The noun is derived from the adjective.
Cognates
* Italian abiecto (obsolete), abietto
* Late Latin abiectus (“humble or poor person”, noun)
* Spanish abjecto (obsolete), abyecto

cog

The abject can easily be grafted onto the immigrant body, which is often conceived as something to be excluded in order to preserve a coherent yet racist national imaginary.

2007, Sean Brayton, “MTV's Jackass: Transgression, Abjection and the Economy of White Masculinity”, in Journal of Gender Studies, volume 16, page 59:

The disclosure of tolerance's hidden phobic lining fits in well with queer theory's embrace of the abject.

2009, W. C. Harris, Queer Externalities: Hazardous Encounters in American Culture, SUNY Press, →ISBN, page 98:

(sociology, usually nominalized) Marginalized as deviant.


abjection

en-noun

abjection (countable and uncountable, plural abjections)

/æbˈd͡ʒɛk.ʃn̩/

From Middle English abjeccioun, from either Middle French abjection or Late Latin abiectiōn-, from Latin abiectus (“cast down”).
* See abject.

The disclosure of tolerance's hidden phobic lining fits in well with queer theory's embrace of the abject as exhorted by Michael Warner, David Halperin, and Lee Edelman. Embracing difference or culturally ascribed abjection with the aim of overcoming or dissipating it would be both naive and ineffective.

2009 September 10, W. C. Harris, Queer Externalities: Hazardous Encounters in American Culture, SUNY Press, →ISBN, page 98:

(sociology) The fact of being marginalized as deviant.


absolutism

absolutism (countable and uncountable, plural absolutisms)

First attested in 1753 (in the theological sense); attested in 1830 in the political sense. From absolute + -ism, based after French absolutisme.

The element of absolutism and prelacy was more controlling in the counsels of the rival corporation.

1859, John Gorham Palfrey, chapter IV, in History of New England, volume I, page 217:

As absolutism became more consolidated in Europe, and particularly in France, such nonabsolutist states tended to define themselves in opposition to their absolutist rivals: hence, those features of their government which differed from absolutism tended to be given special prominence.

2019, John Gascoigne, Science and the State, page 54:

(political science, sociology) The principles or practice of absolute or arbitrary government; Synonym of despotism.

աբսոլյուտիզմ

political science: absolute or arbitrary government; despotism


achievement

achievement (countable and uncountable, plural achievements)

achievements (plural)
acheivement (alternative misspelling)

[əˈt͡ʃʰiːv.mɪ̈nt̚]

From Middle French achevement (compare Modern French achèvement), from Old French achevement, from the verb achever, achiever (“to finish”); equivalent to achieve + -ment. The heraldic sense may be influenced by hatchment.

(sociology) The successful completion of a socially defined goal or task, highlighting individual or group accomplishment.


accommodation

accommodation (countable and uncountable, plural accommodations)

accommodations (plural)
accomodation (alternative misspelling)

/əˌkɔm.əˈdæɪ.ʃən/

From French accommodation, from Latin accommodātiō (“adjustment, accommodation, compliance”), from accommodō (“adapt, put in order”). Superficially accommodate + -ion. The sense of "lodging" was first attested in 1600.

der

Pilots […] use the word fuselage whereas laypeople would more likely call the same "thing" the body of an aircraft. […] We have said above that speakers often signal that they belong to a certain group by making their language more similar to that of the other group members […] we thus adapt our language, dialect, accent, style and/or register to that of our addressee or addressees. This process is called speech accommodation. Among the reasons for accommodation may be our desire to identify more closely with the addressee(s), […]

2017 February 13, Annette Becker, Markus Bieswanger, Introduction to English Linguistics, UTB, →ISBN, page 178:

(linguistics, sociolinguistics) Modification(s) to make one's way of communicating similar to others involved in a conversation or discourse.


standard

→ Catalan: estàndard

→ Danish: standard

→ French: standard

→ Italian: standard

→ Polish: standard

→ Spanish: estándar

→ Turkish: standart

From Middle English standard, from Old French estandart (“gathering place, battle flag”), from Frankish *standahard (literally “stand firm, stand hard”), equivalent to stand + -ard. Alternative etymology derives the second element from Frankish *oʀd (“point, spot, place”) (compare Old French ordé (“pointed”), Old English ord (“point, source, vanguard”), German Standort (“location, place, site, position, base”, literally “standing-point”)). Merged with Middle English standar, stander, standere (“flag, banner”, literally “stander”), equivalent to stand + -er. More at stand, hard, ord. As a hill-naming term possibly a calque from Cumbric; equivalent to Welsh lluman (“standard”), arising with confusion with the hill-naming element llumon (“chimney”).

cog

A principle or example or measure used for comparison.

(sociolinguistics) standard idiom, a prestigious or standardized language variety; standard language

стандарт

standard idiom — see also standard language


accent

en-noun

accent (countable and uncountable, plural accents)

From Middle English accent, from Medieval Latin accentus and Old French accent, acent, both from Latin accentus, past participle of accinō (“sing to, sing along”). The word accent had been borrowed into Old English already, but was lost and reborrowed in Middle English.

tongval

distinctive pronunciation associated with a region, social group, etc.

My professor's accent is so thick that it's difficult to understand her lectures.

She spoke with a strong accent that betrayed her southern roots.

I was surprised to learn that he was an immigrant, as he spoke without any accent.

They were all Middle Eastern types but spoke French without any accent.

2015 November 14, Adam Gopnik, quoting Célia, “Terror Strikes in Paris”, in The New Yorker, archived from the original on 2022-12-19:

Growing up in the Rhondda and having a strong accent was never a problem for me and my voice never really stood out from the crowd.

2016 June 8, Tyler Mears, “I used to hide my Valleys accent in case people thought I was less intelligent - which was completely stupid”, in WalesOnline, archived from the original on 2023-01-10:

It's really hard to get in an audition room when you have an accent. Rather than being treated as the other people, you are falling into a category of foreigners who can't really maintain the role.

2018 January 24, Lakshine Sathiyanathan, Lisa Xing, quoting Mariya Miloshevych, “Why some people try to chip away at their accent”, in CBC News, archived from the original on 2022-12-09:

Why go to the effort of writing in a character with an Indian name played by an Indian actor whose main personality trait is that he is stupid and has an accent?

2020 December 30, Christi Carras, quoting Rishi Maharaj, “'Schitt's Creek' star Rizwan Manji defends his character's Indian accent”, in Los Angeles Times, archived from the original on 2022-12-09:

But over the years, even after perfecting "accent-less" English, graduating from college, getting a job at Goldman Sachs, and becoming an American citizen, Arce still felt like she didn't belong.

2022 March 22, Elise Hu, Jinae West, Jordana Hochman, Andrea Gutierrez, “Rejecting assimilation in 'You Sound Like a White Girl'”, in NPR, archived from the original on 2022-12-09:

(linguistics, sociolinguistics) The distinctive manner of pronouncing a language associated with a particular region, social group, etc., whether of a native speaker or a foreign speaker; the phonetic and phonological aspects of a dialect.

(informal, sometimes proscribed) A manner of pronunciation suggesting that the speaker is from a different region; a foreign accent.

I believe I still retain some of my hearing accent when I use American Sign Language.

2008, Jeremy Linn Brunson, The Practice and Organization of Sign Language, page 76:

Cheesesteaks, Peanut Chews, Tastykakes, oh yeah, the Liberty Bell — there's so much to love about Philadelphia, but one of the best things about the city of Brotherly Love is the accent. We're not talking about spoken English — we're talking about American Sign Language.

2015 November 5, Nina Porzucki, The World, archived from the original on 2022-12-07:

(sign languages) A distinctive manner of producing a sign language, such as someone who does not normally use a certain sign language might have when using it.

手語口音 /手语口音

a foreign accent

a broad Irish accent

a hint of a German accent


transcultural

(sociology, anthropology) Extending through more than one human culture.

ylikulttuurinen

extending through more than one human culture


oral

PIE word
 *h₁óh₃s
Early 17th century borrowing from Late Latin ōrālis, from ōs (“the mouth”) + -ālis (“-al”, adjectival suffix).

af

(relational) Spoken rather than written.

(sociolinguistics, of a society) Not having reached the stage of literacy.


body

en-noun

body (countable and uncountable, plural bodies)

bodies (plural)
bodie (alternative obsolete)

→ Bislama: bodi

→ Chichewa: bóde

→ Finnish: bodi

→ Indonesian: bodi

Jamaican Creole: badi, bady

Nigerian Pidgin: bọdí

→ Spanish: bodi

→ Swahili: bodi

desc

→ Thai: บอดี้ (bɔɔ-dîi), บอดี

→ Thai: บอดี้ (bɔɔ-dîi), บอดี

Tok Pisin: bodi

Torres Strait Creole: bodi

Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *bʰewdʰ-
Proto-West Germanic *bodag
Old English bodiġ
Middle English bodi
English body
From Middle English bodi, bodiȝ, from Old English bodiġ (“body, trunk, chest, torso, height, stature”), from Proto-West Germanic *bodag (“body, trunk”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewdʰ- (“to be awake, observe”). Cognate with Old High German botah (whence Swabian Bottich (“body, torso”)).

有黏性

comparative viscosity, solidity or substance

body-focused repetitive behavior disorder

This, of course, was not about the State, but it was certainly an invasion: black bodies acting out in a public domain circumscribed by a racist culture. The Garvey movement presents an example of black bodies transgressing racialized spatial boundaries.

1999, Devon Carbado, Black Men on Race, Gender, and Sexuality: A Critical Reader, page 87:

In doing so, Haritaworn also rethinks the marginality of transgender bodies and practices in queer movements and spaces.

2012, Trystan T. Cotten, Transgender Migrations, page 3:

As the title suggests, this project is particularly interested in how race intersects with reproductive technologies—how brown bodies are deployed in the creation of white babies.

2016, Laura Harrison, Brown Bodies, White Babies, page 5:

(sociology) A human being, regarded as marginalized or oppressed.


recuperate

en-verb

recuperate (third-person singular simple present recuperates, present participle recuperating, simple past and past participle recuperated)

recuperates (present singular third-person)
recuperating (participle present)
recuperated (participle past)
recuperated (past)

Borrowed from Latin recuperāre, alternative form of reciperāre (“get again, regain, recover”). Doublet of recover. The pronunciation without /j/ may have been influenced by the semantically similar, but etymologically distinct verb recoup.

Mannheim's purpose when elaborating his typology of ideology was, as we have seen above, to recuperate the concept of ideology for scientific politics, after having discarded elements of Manichean egocentricity.

1991, Joseph Gabel, Karl Mannheim and Hungarian Marxism, page 87:

She sought ultimately to recuperate the classical concept of the public realm against what she described, in negative terms, as the "rise of the social" characteristic of the modern world.

1999, Jonathan M. Hess, Reconstituting the Body Politic, page 24:

[…] there is also the danger […] that such a critique recuperates gender in terms that quite literally invisiblize the very issues of race and ethnicity […]

2002, Roger Beebe, Denise Fulbrook, Ben Saunders, Rock Over the Edge: Transformations in Popular Music Culture:

The fact that even many of the harshest critics of environmental thought have sought to somehow recuperate the concept reflects how deeply it has become embedded in our discourse.

2020, Etienne S. Benson, Surroundings: A History of Environments and Environmentalisms, page 6:

(sociology) To co-opt (a problematic or suspect idea) so that it becomes part of an accepted discourse; to reclaim.


logic

en-noun

logic (countable and uncountable, plural logics)

→ Chinese: 邏輯 /逻辑 (luójí)

From Middle English logik, from Old French logike, from Latin logica, from Ancient Greek λογική (logikḗ, “logic”), from feminine of λογικός (logikós, “of or pertaining to speech or reason or reasoning, rational, reasonable”), from λόγος (lógos, “speech, reason”). Displaced native Old English flitcræft (literally “art of arguing”).

ncog

"We identify four logics of empowerment (political, economic, social, and security) and apply these to understanding empowerment’s historical and contemporary meanings-in-use."

2023, Alba Rosa Boer Cueva et al., Logics of empowerment in the women, peace and security agenda:

(countable, sociology) A system of thought or collection of rhetoric, especially one associated with a social practice.


pass

en-verb

pass (third-person singular simple present passes, present participle passing, simple past and past participle passed)

passes (present singular third-person)
passing (participle present)
passed (participle past)
passed (past)
passe (alternative obsolete)

From Middle English passen, from Old French passer (“to step, walk, pass”), from Vulgar Latin *passāre (“step, walk, pass”), derived from Latin passus (“a step”), from Proto-Italic *pat-s-tus, from Proto-Indo-European *peth₂- (“to spread, stretch out”). Cognate with Old English fæþm (“armful, fathom”). More at fathom.
Displaced native Old English genġan.

مَرَّ

medicine: to eliminate (something) from the body by natural processes; to go through the intestines

اِجْتَازَ

to go through any inspection or test successfully

Coordinate term: roleplay (“act out a social role”)

Chinese sometimes pass for Europeans, but Japs more often approach Western types.

1941 December 22, “How to Tell Japs from the Chinese”, in LIFE, page 81:

[…] a situation where I had to know whether I could pass as a woman, and not tell anyone, and not be asked what I was doing dressed as a woman.

1999, Irene Preiss, Fixed for Life: The True Saga of How Tom Became Sally, page 249:

Like Olivia's aunts (described above), many Americans passed as white to resist the racially restrictive one-drop rule and the racial status quo of the Jim Crow era (Daniel 2002; Williamson 1980).

2010 December, Nikki Khanna, Cathryn Johnson, “Passing as Black: Racial Identity Work among Biracial Americans”, in Social Psychology Quarterly, volume 73, number 4, →DOI:

(intransitive, stative, sociology) To be accepted by others as a member of a race, sex, or other group to which one does not belong or would not have originally appeared to belong; especially to be considered white although one has black ancestry, or a woman although one was assigned male at birth or vice versa.


gender

en-verb

gender (third-person singular simple present genders, present participle gendering, simple past and past participle gendered)

genders (present singular third-person)
gendering (participle present)
gendered (participle past)
gendered (past)
g. (alternative abbreviation)

From Middle English gendre, borrowed from Old French gendre, borrowed from Latin genere (“type, kind”). Doublet of genre and genus. The verb developed after the noun.

In an interview, he even noted that he "dressed, acted and thought like a man" for years, but his coworkers continued to gender him as female (Shaver 1995, 2).

2011, Kristen Schilt, Just One of the Guys?: Transgender Men and the Persistence of Gender Inequality, page 147:

(sociology) To assign a gender to (a person); to perceive as having a gender; to address using terms (pronouns, nouns, adjectives...) that express a certain gender.

At the same time, however, the convictions they held about how a woman or man might write led them to interpret their findings in a rather androcentric fashion, and to gender the text accordingly.

1996, Athalya Brenner, A Feminist Companion to the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament, page 191:

Like every Western culture preceding it, Renaissance society was gendered to the advantage of the adult male, who served as the template for all of humankind, women and children having been misstamped for other uses.

1997, Cheryl Glenn, Rhetoric Retold, page 120:

Yet because texts by “female authors” are not dependent on the voice to gender the text, the topics that they address and the traditions that they employ seem broader and somewhat less constrained by gender stereotypes.

2003, “Reading the Anonymous Female Voice”, in The Anonymous Renaissance: Cultures of Discretion in Tudor-Stuart England, page 244:

“Obedient and obliging machines that pretend to be women are entering our homes, cars and offices,” Saniye Gulser Corat, Unesco’s director for gender equality, said in a statement. “The world needs to pay much closer attention to how, when and whether A.I. technologies are gendered and, crucially, who is gendering them.”

2019 May 22, Megan Specia, “Siri and Alexa Reinforce Gender Bias, U.N. Finds”, in New York Times:

(sociology) To perceive (a thing) as having characteristics associated with a certain gender, or as having been authored by someone of a certain gender.

genrer

to perceive or address as a specific gender


group

groups (plural)
groop (alternative nonstandard)
groupe (alternative obsolete)

→ Gulf Arabic: قروب (grūp)

→ Japanese: グループ (gurūpu)

→ Korean: 그룹 (geurup)

→ Tongan: kulupu

From French groupe (“cluster, group”), from Italian gruppo, groppo (“a knot, heap, group, bag (of money)”), from Vulgar Latin *cruppo, Renaissance Latin grupus, from Frankish *krupp, from Proto-Germanic *kruppaz (“lump, round mass, body, crop”), from Proto-Indo-European *grewb- (“to crumple, bend, crawl”).
In the “group theory” sense, calqued from French groupe, a term coined by the young French mathematician Évariste Galois in 1830.
Cognate with German Kropf (“crop, craw, bunch”); Old English cropp, croppa (“cluster, bunch, sprout, flower, berry, ear of corn, crop”) (whence English crop); Dutch krop (“craw”), Icelandic kroppr (“hump, bunch”). Doublet of crop and croup.

der

(sociology) A subset of a culture or of a society.


class

en-noun

class (countable and uncountable, plural classes)

→ Assamese: ক্লাছ (klas)

desc

→ Bengali: ক্লাস (klaś), কেলাস (kelaś) — nonstandard

q

or from French <i class="Latn mention" lang="fr">classe</i>

→ Gulf Arabic: كلاس (klās) (or from French classe)

→ Hindustani:

Hindi: क्लास (klās)

Urdu: کلاس

→ Japanese: クラス (kurasu)

→ Korean: 클래스 (keullaeseu)

→ Nepali: क्लास (klās)

→ Scottish Gaelic: clas

→ Thai: คลาส (kláas)

→ Yoruba: kíláàsì

From Middle French classe, from Latin classis (“a class or division of the people, assembly of people, the whole body of citizens called to arms, the army, the fleet, later a class or division in general”), from Proto-Indo-European *kelh₁- (“to call, shout”). Doublet of clas and classis.

class action

class-action, class action lawsuit, class suit

Seeing the British establishment struggle with the financial sector is like watching an alcoholic […]. Until 2008 there was denial over what finance had become. […] But the scandals kept coming, and so we entered stage three – what therapists call "bargaining". A broad section of the political class now recognises the need for change but remains unable to see the necessity of a fundamental overhaul. Instead it offers fixes and patches.

2013 June 28, Joris Luyendijk, “Our banks are out of control”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 3, page 21:

(sociology, countable) A social grouping, based on job, wealth, etc. In Britain, society is commonly split into three main classes: upper class, middle class and working class.


acephalous

en-adj

acephalous (comparative more acephalous, superlative most acephalous)

more acephalous (comparative)
most acephalous (superlative)

From French acéphale, from Ancient Greek ἀκέφαλος (aképhalos, “headless”), from ἀ- (a-, “not”) + κεφαλή (kephalḗ, “head”). By surface analysis, a- + -cephalous.

der

an acephalous society / community

[…] an Oecumenical Council is a whole, and a Body whereof the Pope, or he that presides in it in his place, is the Head[.] For there is no Acephalous Council, as M. Schelstrate speaks, that is to say, without a Head, calling that of Constance so in the Absence of the Pope.

1685, Louis Maimbourg, chapter 25, in Archibald Lovell, transl., An Historical Treatise of the Foundation and Prerogatives of the Church of Rome and of Her Bishops, London: Jos. Hindmarsh, pages 318–319:

A very brief acephalous interim followed the death of the dark Dictator.

1870, Richard Francis Burton, Letters from the Battle-Fields of Paraguay, London: Tinsley Brothers, Introductory Essay, p. 54:

(social sciences, political science, sociology) A system of society without centralised state authority, where power is welded amongst groups of community entities e.g. clans. Without a leader or chief.


phalanx

Borrowed from Latin phalanx or Ancient Greek φάλαγξ (phálanx, “battle order, array”). Doublet of phalange, planch, plancha, planche, and plank.

doublet

[Charles Fourier] calculated that if precisely 1,620 men, women and children were collected in a 6,000-acre phalanx, they would — all by merrily following their individual passions — end up satisfying all the phalanx’s essential needs.

2009 April 16, Jon Mooallem, “The End Is Near! (Yay!)”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

(historical sociology) A Fourierite utopian community; a phalanstery.


vector

Learned borrowing from Latin vector (“carrier, transporter”), from vehō (“I carry, I transport, I bear”), also ultimately the root of English vehicle.
The “person or entity that passes along an urban legend or other meme” sense derives from the disease sense.
The mathematics sense was coined by Irish mathematician and astronomer William Rowan Hamilton in 1846.

coin

These days, their primary job is to insist that Facebook is a fun place to share baby photos and sell old couches, not a vector for hate speech, misinformation, and violent extremist propaganda.

2020 October 12, Andrew Marantz, “Why Facebook Can’t Fix Itself”, in The New Yorker:

(epidemiology) A carrier of a disease-causing agent.

(sociology) A person or entity that passes along an urban legend or other meme.

levittäjä

sociology: person or entity that passes along an urban legend or other meme


crossing

en-noun

crossing (countable and uncountable, plural crossings)

(sociolinguistics) The appropriation of a form of language by somebody who is not a member of the group that speaks it.


prestige

From French prestige (“illusion, fascination, enchantment, prestige”), from Latin praestīgium (“a delusion, an illusion”). Despite the phonetic similarities and the old meaning of “delusion, illusion, trick”, the word has a different root than prestidigitator (“conjurer”) and prestidigitation.

der

Furthermore there is in each area a well recognized standard, known by a single name, which although often linguistically distinct from local dialects, has served as the prestige form for some time.

1971, John Gumperz, “Formal and informal standards in Hindi regional language area”, in Language in Social Groups, Stanford: Stanford University Press, →ISBN, page 48:

The 3rd person plural -ą ending is phonetically [ow̃] or [om], depending on the dialect. However, [ow̃] is the prestige form.

1981, Jerzy Rubach, Cyclic Phonology and Palatalization in Polish and English, Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, →OCLC, page 57:

(sociolinguistics, of a linguistic form) Regarded as relatively prestigious; often, considered the standard language or language variety, or a part of such a variety.


passer

Explores the history, literature, and sociology of passing, and provides case studies of six individuals who are "passers," including a black man who passed as a white Jew and a lesbian naval officer who passed as straight.

2003, Brooke Kroeger, Passing: When People Can't Be Who They Are:

Passers and would-be passers make every effort to be convincing in their chosen gender role […]

(sociology) One who is able to "pass", or be accepted as a member of a race, sex or other group to which society would not otherwise regard them as belonging.


stratification

en-noun

stratification (countable and uncountable, plural stratifications)

(sociology) Society's categorization of people into socioeconomic strata.


agency

agency (countable and uncountable, plural agencies)

From Medieval Latin agentia, from Latin agēns (present participle of agere (“to act”)), agentis (cognate with French agence, see also agent).

moral agency

individual agency

Formally, capitalism performs its fundamental gesture—reappropriation without transformation. This bears on the question of subjective agency because this “reappropriation without transformation” is exactly what agency seeks to avoid; such a process indicates, in fact, that one's agency has failed, that one really had no agency in the first place.

2001, Todd McGowan, The Feminine "No!", SUNY Press, →ISBN, page 105:

Strictly speaking, at the level of personal agency one could say that power is a condition where one is “enabled.” I would contend that this is a condition of personal agency.

2012, Edmund V. Sullivan, A Critical Psychology, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 75:

The feeling of being in control of one's body should involve the sense of body-ownership, plus an additional sense of agency.

2013, Andy Clark, Julian Kiverstein, Tillmann Vierkant, Decomposing the Will, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 112:

SCP-3125 incarnated the following winter.
Its first act upon its arrival — or, depending on the degree of intelligent agency you ascribed to it, the first side-effect of its arrival — was the neutralisation of the Foundation.

2019 August 26, qntm, “Unthreaded”, in There Is No Antimemetics Division, →ISBN, page 161:

(sociology, philosophy, psychology) The capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.


dyad

From Ancient Greek δυάς (duás), δυάδ- (duád-) from δύο (dúo, “two”), from Proto-Indo-European *duwó, *duwéh₃ (*dwóh₁). The mathematics sense was coined by American scientist Josiah Willard Gibbs in 1884 in the second half of his book Elements of Vector Analysis.

чифт

pair of things standing in particular relation

For each individual in a specific dyad (i.e., mother-offspring, offspring-father, sibling-sibling), […]

2003, Debra Lieberman, John Tooby, Leda Cosmides, The evolution of human incest avoidance mechanisms […] , page 20:

(sociology) Two persons in an ongoing relationship; dyadic relationship.

(sociology) The relationship or interaction itself in reference to a couple.


public

en-noun

public (countable and uncountable, plural publics)

publics (plural)
publick (alternative)
publicke (alternative)
publike (alternative)
publique (alternative)

The adjective and noun are derived from Late Middle English publik, publike (“(adjective) generally observable, public; relating to the general public or public affairs; (noun) a generally observable place or situation”), from Anglo-Norman public, publik, publique, Middle French public, publique, and Old French public (“(adjective) generally observable, public; relating to the general public; official; (noun) community or its members collectively; nation, state; audience, spectators collectively”) (modern French public, publique (obsolete)); and from their etymon Latin pūblicus (“of or belonging to the community, people, or state; general, public”), an alteration of poplicus (influenced by pūbēs (“adult men; male population”)), from poplus (“community; the people, public; nation, state”) (later populus; from Proto-Italic *poplos (“army”); further origin uncertain, possibly from Etruscan or from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₁- (“to fill”)) + -icus (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’). Doublet of people.
The Middle English word displaced native Old English ceorlfolc and folclic.
The verb is derived from the adjective.

yleisö

particular demographic or group of people, or segment of the population, sharing some common characteristic; (sociology) group of people sharing some common interest, but not necessarily having any interactions with each other

(often public relations) Often preceded by the and a qualifying word: a particular demographic or group of people, or segment of the population, sharing some common characteristic.

(sociology) A group of people sharing some common cultural, political, or social interest, but not necessarily having any interactions with each other.


membership

en-verb

membership (third-person singular simple present memberships, present participle membershipping, simple past and past participle membershipped)

memberships (present singular third-person)
membershipping (participle present)
membershipped (participle past)
membershipped (past)

Whatever the topic of the conversation the speaker must ‘membership’ his listener, put him into one of two or more mutually exclusive boxes. Each time a topic changes the listener must be re-membershipped, and during a conversation the same person may be membershipped as a doctor, a rugby player, a liberal, a gardener, a bridge player.

1975 April, Malcolm Coulthard, “Discourse Analysis in English – A Short Review of the Literature”, in Language Teaching, volume 8, number 2, →DOI, page 83:

(transitive, sociolinguistics) To classify (someone) as belonging to a certain group or community.


binary

en-adj

binary (comparative more binary, superlative most binary)

more binary (comparative)
most binary (superlative)

From Late Latin bīnārius (“consisting of two”), from Latin bīnī (“two-by-two, pair”). By surface analysis, bin- + -ary.

двайко́вы

being in a state of one of two mutually exclusive conditions such as on or off

To further unpack trans and gender-diverse embodiment, requires one to unpack the depth of the discourse as it relates to both binary and non-binary people (Hofman, 2012). It necessitates deeper engagement as to the politics of passing, not passing, societal assimilation and non-assimilation.

2020, Liberty Matthyse, “Achieving gender equality by 2030: Transgender equality in relation to Sustainable Development Goal 5”, in Agenda, volume 34, number 1 (Gendered and Feminist Inequalities), →DOI, →ISSN, page 3:

(biology, sociology) Having or pertaining to a gender identity represented by the gender binary; either male or female.


minority

en-noun

minority (countable and uncountable, plural minorities)

From Middle French minorité, and its source Late Latin minōritās, from Latin minor.
Morphologically minor + -ity

But we have seen that one important difference between women and other minorities is that women's attitudes and self-conceptions are conditioned more largely by interaction with both minority and dominant group members

1951 October, Helen Mayer Hacker, “Women as Minority Group”, in Howard W. Odum, Katherine Jocher, editors, Social Forces, volume 30, number 1, Williams & Wilkins, →DOI, page 63:

(sociology) A group of people seen as distinct who are subordinated and discriminated against in a society.


erasure

erasure (countable and uncountable, plural erasures)

From Latin ērādō (“to erase”) + -tūra, equivalent to erase + -ure.

bisexual erasure

(sociology) A tendency to ignore or conceal an element of society.


depolarization

depolarization (countable and uncountable, plural depolarizations)

depolarizations (plural)
depolarisation (alternative)

hypopolarization:

shift in intracellular electrical charge distribution

Coordinate term: deradicalization

The act of reducing polarity, or the result of such action; reduction to an unpolarized or less polarized condition.

(sociology) Reduction of political polarization.


empiricism

empiricism (countable and uncountable, plural empiricisms)

ἐμπειρῐκή

practice of medicine founded on experience only

(social sciences, political science, sociology) Research methodology shaped from empirical philosophy (see above), e.g. surveys, statistics, etc.


eugenics

Coined by Francis Galton in 1883. From ἐΰς (eǘs, “good”) + γίγνομαι (gígnomai, “breeding”), “well-bred”, “good in stock”. Parallel to Eugene.

af

In keeping with the goals of the new eugenics movement, McCulloch was claiming to offer scientific evidence of the incorrigibility of poor rural whites.

2006, Matt Wray, Not Quite White, page 77:

(sociology, biology) A social philosophy or practice which advocates the improvement of human hereditary qualities through selective breeding, either by encouraging people with superior genetic qualities to reproduce (positive eugenics), or discouraging people with inferior genetic qualities from reproducing (negative eugenics), or by technological means.


figuration

en-noun

figuration (countable and uncountable, plural figurations)

/ˌfɪɡ.jəˈɹeɪ.ʃən/

/ˌfɪɡ.əˈɹeɪ.ʃən/

Late Middle English figuracion, from Middle French figuration, from Latin figūrō (“to form”). Equivalent to figurate + -ion.

Figurations of interdependent people make up many webs of interdependence, which are characterized in part by different balances of power of many sorts, such as families, states, towns or simply groups.

2006, Grant Jarvie, Sport, Culture, and Society, page 26:

(sociology) A structure through which people are joined, or the process of constructing such structures.


segregation

segregation (countable and uncountable, plural segregations)

/sɛɡɹəˈɡeɪ̯ʃən/

1555. From Latin segregatio.
Morphologically segregate + -ion

(sociology) The separation of people (geographically, residentially, or in businesses, public transit, etc) into various categories which occurs due to social forces (culture, etc).


imaginary

/ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪnəɹi/

/ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪnɹi/

/ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪˌn(ɛ)ɹi/

From Middle English ymaginarie, ymagynary, from Latin imāginārius (“relating to images, fancied”), from imāgō, equivalent to imagine + -ary.
The mathematical sense derives from René Descartes's use (of the French imaginaire) in 1637, La Geometrie, to ridicule the notion of regarding non-real roots of polynomials as numbers. Although Descartes' usage was derogatory, the designation stuck even after the concept gained acceptance in the 18th century.

der

The sensory media are sensuous materials which prolong our bodily life into the surrounding world, and hence the media are imaginaries. These perceptually penetrated materials are " imaginaries " because they operate here in our living body […].

1978, John Derrickson McCurdy, Visionary Appropriation, page 145:

For example, colonial motifs of many kinds became increasingly central to the British national imaginary from the mid-nineteenth century, while the imaginative significance of 'the soldier' has long been derived from, and helped to sustain, the linkage between national and military imaginaries.

1994, Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire, and the Imagining ..., page 51:

While Oil, its extraction, and the global petroculture and its role in transforming the planet's climate undoubtedly play a crucial role in the Antropocene imaginary — to the extent that petrofiction has been construed not just as a genre but as a periodizing gesture of "petromodernity" — it would hamper both the imagination and the root of petrofiction to restrict the range of this term to the encounter with fossil fuels within a carbon imaginary.

2015, Adrian Daub, Elisabeth Krimmer, Goethe Yearbook 22, page 96:

(sociology) The set of values, institutions, laws, and symbols common to a particular social group and the corresponding society through which people imagine their social whole.


self-fulfilling prophecy

en-noun

self-fulfilling prophecy (plural self-fulfilling prophecies)

Coordinate term: self-defeating prophecy

Whether or not we believe in astrology is irrelevant; the question is, did the Magdalenians? If so, then in a self-fulfilling prophecy they may have been organizing their lives according to a religious belief system, and not simply an economic or ecological one.

1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 130:

Operator Abellio ScotRail doubled the Mon-Sat service from one train in each direction to two from May 2019 - it being something of a self-fulfilling prophecy that if you lay on trains, people might use them.

2022 January 26, Stephen Roberts, “Top of the stops: our least used stations”, in RAIL, number 949, page 56:

(philosophy, sociology) A prediction that, by being voiced, causes itself to come true.


social engineering

The following discussion will use two examples - namely public housing and the social security scheme, the Central Provident Fund (CPF) - to illustrate the effects of distributing the fruits of economic development via social engineering projects.

2006, Johnny Sung, Explaining the Economic Success of Singapore, →ISBN:

In 1961, Russell Kirk provided a distillation of these conservative salvos against social engineering in a more public forum. In The New York Times Magazine, the political scientist and regular National Review columnist cited Pitirim Sorkin's call in Fads and Foibles for a balancing of the scientific method with older humanistic modes of inquiry as evidence that mainstream sociologists had become scientistic "true believers," rejecting "humanitarian" models of inquiry in favor of that which could be measured and tabulated.

2008, David Haney, The Americanization of Social Science, →ISBN, page 188:

In other words, we note that the social engineering model of knowledge utilization research is burdened with the outdated maxim of "technology as applied science". Accepting the possibility of intermediary professions, we get the "real" social engineering model, entailing an independent analytic profession, as an alternative to the enlightenment model with its romantic dichotomy between theory and practice.

2012, S.A. Cropper, Michael C. Jackson, Paul Keys, Operational Research and the Social Sciences, →ISBN, page 155:

(sociology) Use of numerical data to inform social programs.


organic

en-adj

organic (comparative more organic, superlative most organic)

more organic (comparative)
most organic (superlative)
organick (alternative)

From Middle English organic, organik, from Old French organique, from Latin organicus.

(sociology) Describing a form of social solidarity theorized by Emile Durkheim that is characterized by voluntary engagements in complex interdependencies for mutual benefit (such as business agreements), rather than mechanical solidarity, which depends on ascribed relations between people (as in a family or tribe).


reverse racism

Based on the notion that racism is usually directed from the political majority to a political minority.

The unassailable statements that Indians are as good as we are, and better in some respects, and that their tribal ways are an important American value, shade imperceptibly into reverse racism: Indians are better than we are, in all respects, and their tribal ways will save and redeem us.

1935, The New Leader, volume 48, American Labor Conference on International Affairs, page 21:

By claiming that meritocratic judgments trump egalitarian efforts to produce tangible results, neoconservatives cast affirmative action policies as multiracial reverse racism and the major cause of racial divisiveness and low black self-esteem...

1996, George E. Curry, The Affirmative Action Debate, →ISBN, page 33:

(sociology) Racism against the racial majority (either a member or group of that majority or the majority in general).


problematic

problematic (comparative more problematic, superlative most problematic)

more problematic (comparative)
most problematic (superlative)

Borrowed from Middle French problématique, from Late Latin problematicus, from Ancient Greek προβληματικός (problēmatikós), from πρόβλημα (próblēma, “outjutting, barrier, problem”), from προβάλλω (probállō, “I throw, place before”), from πρό (pró, “before”) + βάλλω (bállō, “I throw, place”). By surface analysis, problem + -atic.

der

προβληματικός

2015 April 10, Paige Tutt, Apple’s new diverse emoji are even more problematic than before: Racialized emoji insert race into texts and tweets where it never would have arisen before:

Posing a problem; having or suffering from problem(s):

(sociology) Contributing (especially if subtly) to discrimination (such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or ageism).


embodiment

en-noun

embodiment (countable and uncountable, plural embodiments)

In many respects, the genre [science fiction] was exceptionally well suited to extrapolate from contemporary social concerns and promote visions of alternative societies, new forms of embodiment, and novel pathways for desire and pleasure.

2001, Susan Stryker, Queer Pulp, page 17:

(sociology) The ways that knowledge, personality, culture, etc. are modulated by being experienced through a physical body.


valence

valence (countable and uncountable, plural valences)

Sense 1.1 (“combining capacity of an atom”) and sense 3 (“one-dimensional value assigned by a person to an object, situation, or state”) are borrowed from German Valenz + English -ence (suffix meaning ‘having the condition or state of’). Valenz is a clipping of Quantivalenz (“(archaic) valence in chemistry”), from English quantivalence, from Latin quantus (“how much”) + English -i- (interfix inserted between morphemes of Latin origin for ease of pronunciation) + Latin valentia (“bodily strength; health; vigour”) (whence Late Middle English valence (“medicinal preparation made from plants”); ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂welh₁- (“to rule; powerful, strong”)). Quantivalence was coined by F. O. Ward who communicated it to the German chemist August Wilhelm von Hofmann (1818–1892), leading him to coin the German word Quantivalenz. Doublet of value.
Sense 2 (“number of arguments a verb can have”) was formed by analogy to the use of the word in chemistry: see above.

der

(uncountable, sociology) The value which a person places on something.


verstehen

Unadapted borrowing from German Verstehen or German verstehen (“to understand, comprehend”).

bor

(sociology) A stance that attempts to understand the meaning of action from the actor’s point of view, so that the actor is seen as a subject rather than an object of observation.


carnival

carnivals (plural)
carnaval (alternative obsolete)

→ Japanese: カーニバル (kānibaru)

From Middle French carnaval, from Italian carnevale, possibly from the Latin phrase carnem levāmen (“meat dismissal”). Other scholars suggest Latin carnuālia (“meat-based country feast”) or carrus nāvālis (“boat wagon; float”) instead. Doublet of carnaval.

The social environment contains the ambiguous traces of carnival: it resists the ideology of capitalism and, at the same time, reproduces the capitalist social order.

2010, Gulnara Karimova, “Jackass, South Park, and 'Everyday' Culture”, in Studies in Popular Culture, volume 33, page 37:

(sociology) A context in which transgression or inversion of the social order is given temporary license. Derived from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin.


choice theory

en-noun

choice theory (usually uncountable, plural choice theories)

(sociology) Any of various models of group behavior (such as economic behavior, criminal behavior, or consumer behavior) as the cumulative result of rational choices made by individuals expressing on their preferences and/or meeting their needs.


dispositif

dispositifs (plural)
dispositive (alternative)

terms expressing the notion for court decision under common law

(sociology) According to Michel Foucault, the aggregate of institutional, physical and administrative mechanisms and knowledge structures that enhance and maintain the exercise of power within society.


patrilocality

From patrilocal + -ity, from patri- + local.

(sociology) A socially instituted practice whereupon a married couple lives with or near the family of the husband.


diglossia

From Latin diglōssia. In linguistics introduced 1959 by Charles A. Ferguson, based on French diglossie, from Ancient Greek δίγλωσσος (díglōssos, “bilingual”) + -ία (-ía). Equivalent to di- + -glossia.

der

Coordinate term: digraphia

To begin with, of the two varieties involved in diglossia, the one serving (H)igh societal functions, unlike that reserved for (L)ow ones, is nobody's mother tongue: it is learned in later life largely by formal education, and is not used for ordinary conversation. Secondly, the diglossic contrast concerns widely divergent varieties, as opposed to stylistic contrasts which tend to be small-scale. Moreover, diglossia occurs within a single language, while bilingualism or multilingualism, involve far more divergent linguistic systems.

1994, Periklis Daltas, “The Concept of Diglossia from Ferguson to Fishman to Fasold”, in Irene Philippaki-Warburton, Katerina Nicolaidis, Maria Sifianou, editors, Themes in Greek Linguistics: Papers from the First International Conference on Greek Linguistics, John Benjamins Publishing Company, page 341:

2000, Joshua A. Fishman, Chapter 3: Bilingualism with and without diglossia; diglossia with and without bilingualism, Li Wei (editor), The Bilingualism Reader, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), page 81,
It is the purpose of this chapter to relate these two research traditions to each other by tracing the interaction between their two major constructs: bilingualism (on the part of psychologists) and diglossia (on the part of sociologists).

Only very small and isolated communities display neither diglossia nor bilingualism.

2013, Elien Declercq, Michael Boyden, “Multilingualism and Diglossia in Migration Literature: The Case of Flemish Songs in Northern France”, in Wolfgang Behschnitt, Sarah De Mul, Liesbeth Minnaard, editors, Literature, Language, and Multiculturalism in Scandinavia and the Low Countries, Rodopi, page 20:

(linguistics, sociology) The coexistence in a given population of two closely related native languages or dialects, one of which is regarded as more prestigious than the other; the similar coexistence of two unrelated languages.

اِزْدِوَاجِيَّة لُغَوِيَّة

the coexistence of two closely related native languages

二言語変種使い分け

にげんごへんしゅつかいわけ


social stigma

en-noun

social stigma (plural social stigmas or social stigmata)

social stigmas (plural)
social stigmata (plural)

(sociology) Severe social disapproval of a person or a certain behavior.


sociolect

From socio- + -lect, by analogy with dialect, idiolect, etc.

The French literary critic Roland Barthes has paid special attention to the relationship between the individual language ("idiolect") and the language of a collective of speech ("sociolect"). Public life is characterized by "social multilingualism." There are a number of languages, such as the language of the church, the language of the prison, the language of the children, the language of the ruling elite, and other "social languages."

1984, Yu[ri] Suvaryan, V[aleri] Mirzoyan, R[uben] Hayrapetyan, “Language and Speech in the System of Public Administration”, in Public Administration: Theory and History, Yerevan, Armenia: “Gitutuin” Publishing House of the NAS RA [National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia], →ISBN, page 277:

[…] I believe that it is mistaken to maintain that the language of ideology is a discrete ‘sociolect’, a sort of meta-language which draws upon but remains distinct from the language of everyday life.

1984, John B[rookshire] Thompson, “Theories of Ideology and Methods of Discourse Analysis: Towards a Framework for the Analysis of Ideology”, in Studies in the Theory of Ideology, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 89:

This paper uses sociolect as a cover term for slang, technical jargon (professionalisms), and argot. From the point of view of its secret nature, two kinds of sociolects are distinguished: slang and technical jargon on the one hand, and argot on the other, with the difference being in the presence or lack of an intention of secrecy.

1999, Pavol Odaloš, “Mi a szociolektus és mi a szleng? [What is a Sociolect and what is Slang?]”, in Anna Fenyvesi, Tamás Kis, Judit Szilvia Várnai, editors, Mi a szleng? Tanulmányok a szleng fogalmáról [What is Slang? Studies on the Concept of Slang] (Szlengkutatás [Slang Research]; 3), Debrecen, Hungary: Kossuth Egyetemi Kiadó [Kossuth University Press], →ISBN, →ISSN, English summary, page 50:

In sociolinguistics, a sociolect or social dialect is a variety of language (a register) associated with a social group such as a socioeconomic class, an ethnic group (precisely termed ethnolect), an age group, etc. Sociolects involve both passive acquisition of particular communicative practices through association with a local community, as well as active learning and choice among speech or writing forms to demonstrate identification with particular grounds. Sociolinguists define a sociolect by examining the social distribution of specific linguistic terms.

2014, Peter Wuteh Vakunta, “Literary Camfranglais in Mercédès Fouda’s Je parle camerounais : pour un renouveau francofaune”, in Camfranglais: The Making of a New Language in Cameroonian Literature, Mankon, Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group, →ISBN, page 82, footnote 26:

(sociolinguistics) The variant of language used by a social group such as a socioeconomic class, an ethnic group, an age group, etc.


atavism

atavism (countable and uncountable, plural atavisms)

/ˈætəˌvɪzəm/

[ˈæɾəˌvɪzəm]

I have even read in a book of criminology that the tramp is an atavism, a throw-back to the nomadic stage of humanity.

1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XXXVI, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC:

"...he traces the roots of objectless imperialism to three sources, each an atavism. Modern imperialism, according to Schumpeter, resulted from the combined impact of a "war machine", warlike instincts, and export monopolism".

1986, Michael Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics”, in American Political Science Review, volume 80, number 4:

(sociology) Reversion to past primitive behavior, especially violence.


marginal

en-adj

marginal (not generally comparable, comparative more marginal, superlative most marginal)

more marginal (comparative)
most marginal (superlative)

Learned borrowing from Medieval Latin marginālis, equivalent to margin + -al.

լուսանցքային

of, relating to, or located at a margin or an edge

vaa’ankieli-

where the winning margin was a small proportion of the total number of votes

The caseworker couldn't understand how I could have stretched out my last bit of money for so long. She seemed convinced that I was "hiding" income from her and interrogated me for I don't know how long. […] The system seems based on the assumption that people are "welfare cheats." If you don't speak English or are marginal in some other way, it's worse.

1990 February 4, Margy Dowzer, Mary Frances Platt, Aviva Shmuckler, “Disability And Accessibility Cost Money!”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 29, page 13:


deviate

From a substantivation of Late Latin dēviātus, see Etymology 1 and -ate (noun-forming suffix) for more.

[…] Walton has suggested that it is desirable "to name the phenomena signs of deviation, and call their possessors deviates or a deviate as the case may be […]

1915, James Cornelius Wilson, A Handbook of medical diagnosis:

Under these conditions the person who appears as a deviate is a deviate only because we have chosen, somewhat arbitrarily, to call him a member of the court […]

1959, Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter, Kurt W. Back, Social Pressures in Informal Groups: A Study of Human Factors in Housing:

[…] The second confederate was also to be a deviate initially […]

(sociology) A person with deviant behaviour; a deviant, degenerate or pervert.

poikkeava

sociology: a person with deviant behaviour; a deviant, degenerate or pervert


deviate

From Late Latin dēviātus, see Etymology 1 and -ate (adjective-forming suffix) for more.

It's somewhat in vogue to give special attention and consideration to the alternative lifestyle, which five years ago we would have called the deviate lifestyle.

1987 February 1, Kim Westheimer, quoting John Gillespie, “Rawhide Boys”, in Gay Community News, volume 14, number 28, page 2:


AAP

affirmative action
affirmative action#English

(US, sociology, politics) Initialism of affirmative action program.


LL

linguistic landscape
linguistic landscape#English

(sociolinguistics) Abbreviation of linguistic landscape.


antislavery

en-adj

antislavery (comparative more antislavery, superlative most antislavery)

more antislavery (comparative)
most antislavery (superlative)

Prior to the U.S. Civil War, there were a number of northern periodicals devoted to publishing antislavery content.

(sociology) Opposed to the practice of slavery.


mobility

en-noun

mobility (countable and uncountable, plural mobilities)

From Middle French mobilité, and its source, Latin mōbilitās (“mobility”).

The difficulty of rising up the economic ladder is reflected in the decline in mobility in the United States. […] The frustration over the lack of mobility is particularly acute for those without college degrees.

2020 July 28, Thomas B. Edsall, “Trump Is Trying to Bend Reality to His Will”, in New York Times:

(chiefly sociology) The ability of people to move between different social levels or professional occupations.


tipping point

First use of the term appears c. 1959 in the New York Times.

(sociology) A point in time when a group rapidly and dramatically changes its behavior by widely adopting a previously rare practice.

The point in time at which some new technology becomes mainstream.


nationist

en-adj

nationist (comparative more nationist, superlative most nationist)

more nationist (comparative)
most nationist (superlative)

From nation + -ist, from nationism, Joshua Fishman, 1968.

(sociolinguistics) A language used for the day-to-day functioning of government – official forms, intra-government communication.


isomorphism

en-noun

isomorphism (countable and uncountable, plural isomorphisms)

Isomorphism on Encyclopedia of Mathematics

Natural Isomorphism on Wolfram MathWorld

(sociology) the similarity in the structure or processes of different organizations.


resonance

resonance (countable and uncountable, plural resonances)

From Old French resonance (French résonance), from Latin resonantia (“echo”), from resonō (“I resound”).

Resonance is a kind of relationship to the world, formed through affect and emotion, intrinsic interest, and perceived self-efficacy, in which subject and world are mutually affected and transformed.

2019 [2016], James Wagner, transl., Resonance, John Wiley & Sons, translation of Resonanz by Hartmut Rosa, →ISBN:

(sociology) A quality of human relationship with the world.


stratified

(sociology) Of a society, having a class structure.


normalization

normalization (countable and uncountable, plural normalizations)

normalizations (plural)
normalisation (alternative UK)

[ˌnoː.məˌlɑɪˈzæɪ.ʃn̩]

From normal + -ization or normalize + -ation.

(sociology) A process whereby artificial and unwanted norms of behaviour and models of behaviour are made to seem natural and wanted, through propaganda, influence, imitation and conformity.


polarization

polarization (countable and uncountable, plural polarizations)

polarizations (plural)
polarisation (alternative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-polarization.wav

Borrowed from French polarisation. By surface analysis, polarize + -ation or polar + -ization.

What frazzled pollsters, surly op-ed pages, snarling cable talkfests and issue-starved candidates for office need is a fresh source of hot-eyed national polarization.

2004 February 6, William Safire, “Abolish the Penny”, in The New York Times:

Polarization is tearing at the seams of democracies around the world, from Brazil and India to Poland and Turkey.

2019 October 1, Thomas Carothers, Andrew O’Donohue, “How to Understand the Global Spread of Political Polarization”, in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, archived from the original on 2023-02-14:

The production or the condition of polarity.

(sociology) The grouping of opinions into two extremes.


biofact

(philosophy, sociology, the arts) A hybrid of an artefact and a living entity, or between concepts of nature and technology.


appropriation

appropriation (countable and uncountable, plural appropriations)

/əˌpɹoʊpɹiˈeɪʃən/

From Middle English appropriacion, appropriacioun, from Medieval Latin appropriātiō. By surface analysis, appropriate + -ion.

(sociology) The assimilation of concepts into a governing framework.


modality

modality (countable and uncountable, plural modalities)

Thus, the University budgeting system can be seen not only as modality in the reproduction of social structures, but also as an important means of meeting deeply rooted psychological needs for ontological security.

1997, Christopher G. A. Bryant, David Jary, Anthony Giddens: Critical Assessments - Volume 4, →ISBN, page 307:

Modalities of structuration, then, are simply ways in which rules and resources are knowingly used by people in interactions.

2010, Kenneth Allan, Contemporary Social and Sociological Theory: Visualizing Social Worlds, →ISBN, page 255:

In turn, social structure and human interactions are interrelated through three aspects of modality: interpretive schema, facility, and norm.

2016, Jia Luo, Social Structuration in Tibetan Society, →ISBN:

An example, which I explore in detail in this book in Chap. 5, is the way that parents to be use their knowledge and expertise of how to mobilise digital memories (their affordances to use a mobile phone, to use social media platforms for example) to take sonographic image of the unborn foetus that they are given in a hospital out into the world and beyond. They thereby shift the modality of the medical procedure that generated the image-memory as part of an obstetric sonogram.

2016, Anna Reading, Gender and Memory in the Globital Age, →ISBN, page 52:

(sociology) The way in which infrastructure and knowledge of how to use it give rise to a meaningful pattern of interaction (a concept in Anthony Giddens's structuration theory).


topicalize

en-verb

topicalize (third-person singular simple present topicalizes, present participle topicalizing, simple past and past participle topicalized)

topicalizes (present singular third-person)
topicalizing (participle present)
topicalized (participle past)
topicalized (past)
topicalise (alternative)

[…] during the whole media debate the alternative point of view and the perspective and rights of the minority groups themselves were hardly, if at all, topicalized.

2013, Teun A. van Dijk, News Analysis, page 203:

(sociology) To treat (a subject) as a topic.


basilect

From basi- (“base, bottom”) + -lect (“speech”).

confix

The highest level of good English has been called the acrolect; the lowest level of poor speech, the basilect; both are contrasted with the matrilect, the general native language.

1977, Joseph Twadell Shipley, In praise of English: the growth & use of language, page 78:

In both regions English is used extensively, the spoken form ranging from, in the language of linguisticians, the basilect to the mesolect and the matrilect or acrolect (prestige English) .

1987, Douglas N. Young, Language--planning and medium in education:

If only the basilect is a true creole, then the mesolect is relegated to limbo -- not a creole, certainly not a standard.

1996, James E. Alatis, Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics, →ISBN:

(sociolinguistics) A variety of a language that differs substantially from the standard form, and is only considered suitable for very informal contexts by speakers.

basilect

variety of a language that has diverged greatly from the standard form


passing

en-noun

passing (countable and uncountable, plural passings)

→ Japanese: パッシング (passhingu)

Coordinate term: pass

When there is a discrepancy between an individual's actual social identity and his virtual one, it is possible for this fact to be known to us before we normals contact him, or to be quite evident when he presents himself before us. He is a discredited person, and it is mainly he I have been dealing with until now.
… However, when his differentness is not immediately apparent, and is not known beforehand, … he is a discreditable, not a discredited person …. The issue is … that of managing information about his failing. To display or not to display; to tell or not to tell; to let on or not to let on; to lie or not to lie; and in each case, to whom, how, when, and where.
… It is this second general issue, the management of undisclosed discrediting information about self, that I am focusing on in these notes - in brief, 'passing'.

1963, Erving Goffman, 'Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity', Ch.2 at p.57, 58 (page numbers per the Pelican Books 1976 reprint)

(sociology) The ability of a person to be regarded as a member of an identity group or category different from their own.

passabilidade

ability of a person to be regarded as a member of an identity group different from their own


culture shock

culture shock (countable and uncountable, plural culture shocks)

Having grown up in rural Arkansas, I experienced tremendous culture shock on moving to Harlem.

I went through another, reverse culture shock when I got back to Israel and the efort ^([sic]) required to change from cherished and catered-to visitor to an ordinary working woman kept me away from my typewriter jor ^([sic]) months.

1982 December 4, Ilana Weinstock, “Letters From My Aunt”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 20, page 4:

(anthropology, sociology) A state of anxious confusion experienced by someone exposed to an alien or unfamiliar environment.


situated

(sociology) Embedded or rooted within a culture.


passable

en-adj

passable (comparative more passable, superlative most passable)

more passable (comparative)
most passable (superlative)

From French passable, equivalent to pass + -able.

The idea of something, or someone, being unusual and sexual is intoxicating. I concluded that if I ever met a very passable transsexual and we were attracted to one another, I'd go bisexual and pursue the relationship.

2014, Paul Stryker, Confessions of a Sex Offender, page 33:

(sociology) able to "pass", or be accepted as a member of a race, sex or other group to which society would not otherwise regard one as belonging.

passável

able to be accepted as a member of a race, sex or other group


Gesellschaft

en-noun

Gesellschaft (plural Gesellschaften or Gesellschafts)

Gesellschaften (plural)
Gesellschafts (plural)
gesellschaft (alternative)

Borrowed from German Gesellschaft, from Geselle + -schaft. Compare to English gemeinschaft.

Seven years later, Hernández wrote a Return of Martín Fierro in which the Gaucho sells out: assimilates back into Christian society, gives up his freedom for the kind of constitutional Gesellschaft being pushed in those days by Buenos Aires.

1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow:

(sociology) A hypothetical mode of society, made up of self-serving individuals linked by impersonal ties; as opposed to Gemeinschaft.


assimilation

assimilation (countable and uncountable, plural assimilations)

/əˌsɪməˈleɪʃən/

Borrowed from Medieval Latin assimilatio. By surface analysis, assimilate + -ion.

After centuries of British cultural assimilation, a majority of Irish now speak English instead of Irish.

Assimilation was one of the words they used for Indians becoming white in order to survive, in order that they might not be killed for being Indians.

2024, Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars, Harvill Secker, page 55:

(sociology, cultural studies) The adoption, by a minority group, of the customs and attitudes of the dominant culture.


acrolect

From acro- (“tip; peak”) + -lect, coined by William Alexander Stewart in 1965.

coin

In one dimension change is directed toward the acrolect, the “typical” change in the creole continuum.

1994, Michael Montgomery, The Crucible of Carolina, University of Georgia Press, →ISBN, page 60:

At the other end of the continuum is the most standard speech, the acrolect. In between is a gradient of forms with many successive levels, the mesolects.

2013, Allan Bell, The Guidebook to Sociolinguistics, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 83:

(sociolinguistics) The variety of speech that is considered most suitable for formal occasions (typically using only standard forms).

acrolecte

variety of speech that is considered the standard form


adaptation

en-noun

adaptation (countable and uncountable, plural adaptations)

adaptations (plural)
adaption (alternative rare)

/ˌædəpˈteɪʃən/

/ˌædæpˈteɪʃən/

/aˈɖæpˌʈeːʃan/

From French adaptation, from Medieval Latin adaptātiō, from Latin adaptō (“I fit, adjust, modify; I adapt, fit or adjust to”); see adapt. Equivalent to adapt + -ation.

der

(sociology) The means by which social groups adapt to different social and physical environments.


whiteness

en-noun

whiteness (countable and uncountable, plural whitenesses)

whitenesses (plural)
Whiteness (alternative)
whitenesse (alternative obsolete)

Inherited from Middle English whitenesse, whitnesse, whytnesse, hwitnesse, from Old English hwītnes (“whiteness”), equivalent to white + -ness.

inh+

As a white body, I have not had to face my whiteness; insofar as the world is oriented around whiteness, I rarely have to turn my attention back onto myself, as do the black and brown bodies that are “stopped” or “held up” for being out of place […]

2013, Shelley M. Park, Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood, page 42:

(sociology, often capitalized) The quality of being white (in the racial sense).


aesthetic information

Calque of French information esthétique, as used by French social psychologist and philosopher Abraham Moles in his Théorie de l’information et perception esthétique (1958).

lang

Coordinate term: semantic information

If esthetic information is a key element in the structure of political cognitions, it is clearly of crucial importance to learn as much as possible about the dynamics of their generation. Which forms of political cues convey or reinforce which meanings in mass publics?

1971, Murray Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action: Mass Arousal and Quiescence, page 36:

That is to say that the feeling we experience when we see leaves fluttering in the wind is difficult to translate into a verbal description or a drawing. Aesthetic information has no immediate, direct use.

2020 [2015], Jörg Kurt Grütter, Basics of Perception in Architecture, →ISBN, page 5:

Skimming and scanning were two of the main hyper-reading techniques encouraged by the abundance of aesthetic information in the turn-of-the-century ILN and Graphic numbers.

2021, Alison Hedley, Making Pictorial Print: Media Literacy and Mass Culture in British Magazines, 1885–1918, →ISBN, page 82:

(sociology, design) Sensory information that cannot be articulated in language.


sheltered

en-adj

sheltered (comparative more sheltered, superlative most sheltered)

more sheltered (comparative)
most sheltered (superlative)

(sociology) (Of a person) who grew up being overprotected by parents or other guardians; often implies a lack of social skills or worldly experience.


reclaim

en-verb

reclaim (third-person singular simple present reclaims, present participle reclaiming, simple past and past participle reclaimed)

reclaims (present singular third-person)
reclaiming (participle present)
reclaimed (participle past)
reclaimed (past)

From Middle English reclaymen, recleymen, reclamen, from Anglo-Norman reclamer (noun reclaim and Middle French reclamer (noun reclaim), from Latin reclāmō, reclāmāre.

Once a term of homophobic abuse, the term “queer” has been reclaimed as a marker for some gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender (GLBT), and other marginalized sexual identities.

(sociology) To bring back a term into acceptable usage, usually of a slur, and usually by the group that was once targeted by that slur.


pluralism

en-noun

pluralism (countable and uncountable, plural pluralisms)

Instead, it is more probable that globalization is leading to a plurality of pluralisms.

2007, Matthias Koenig with Paul F. A. Guchteneire, Unesco, Democracy and Human Rights in Multicultural Societies, page 251:

(sociology) A social system that permits smaller groups within a society to maintain their individual cultural identities.

плурализъм

social system with multiple cultural identities


homogamy

Surgeons no longer pursue nurses as they did when the former were most likely men and the latter women; now they go for anaesthetists or other surgeons. In one sense homogamy is desirable, because it means women are less dependent on status-asymmetric marriages; in another, it’s dismal because it constitutes a form of social closure […]

2018 December 21, Stuart Jeffries, “Germany’s Hidden Crisis by Oliver Nachtwey review – social decline in the heart of Europe”, in The Guardian:

(sociology) Marriage or other union between similar people, or people of the same sex.


closure

closure (countable and uncountable, plural closures)

From Middle English closure, from Old French closure, from Late Latin clausura, from Latin claudere (“to close”); see clausure and cloture (etymological doublets) and close.

(sociology) The phenomenon by which a group maintains its resources by the exclusion of others based on various criteria. ᵂᵖ


nationism

nationism (countable and uncountable, plural nationisms)

From nation + -ism, by Joshua Fishman, 1968.

In determining language policies, Fishman contends that a country needs to balance the concerns of nationalism (the feelings that develop from a sense of group identity) and nationism (the practical concerns of governing).

1992, Sandra McKay, Teaching English Overseas: an Introduction, page 9:

For these nations language was a prior criterion of national identity, in the sense of ‘nationalism’, and only later became and issue at the level of ‘nation’, once these societies had made the transition from nationalism to nationism.

2002, Tim Ingold, Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology, page 544:

Instead of this, the dominant role of language in nation-building in many states, at least in the early post-independence era, has been […] pragmatic nationism rather than aggressive nationalism.

2008, Andrew Simpson, Language and National Identity in Africa, page 22:

(sociolinguistics) The practical concerns of running a nation, especially seen as divorced from emotional beliefs about national identity.


kidult

Organizational methods appear significantly more frequently in kidult programs, next most frequently in adult programs, and least frequently in children's programs. Escape methods appear most frequently in adult programs with kidult and children's programs about equal.

1963, Alpha Kappa Delta, Sociological Inquiry, volumes 33-34, page 189:

By casting popular culture as simplistic and ‘kidult’, as distinct from the authentic adult culture she approves of, she reduces a complex culture to a generational divide: the new is childish; while the old and established is timeless, worthy of consumption by adults.

2006, Kate Crawford, Adult Themes: Rewriting the Rules of Adulthood, page 192:

In the 21st century, whose “kidult” blurring of the lines sees grown-ups listening to “kindie rock,” feeding their kids gourmet gelato instead of Good Humor, and dissecting the last Pixar film, the notion of a tree house in our collective backyard with a misspelled sign saying “Kidz only” is a healthy thing[.]

2008, Dade Hayes, Anytime Playdate: Inside the Preschool Entertainment Boom, or, How Television Became My Baby’s Best Friend, page 86:

(informal, marketing, sociology) An adult who participates in youth culture and activities traditionally intended for children.

大細路 /大细路

middle-aged person who participates in youth culture


satisfice

en-verb

satisfice (third-person singular simple present satisfices, present participle satisficing, simple past and past participle satisficed)

satisfices (present singular third-person)
satisficing (participle present)
satisficed (participle past)
satisficed (past)

Blend of satisfy + suffice, coined by American political scientist and psychologist Herbert A. Simon in 1956.

coinage

Evidently, organisms adapt well enough to ‘satisfice’; they do not, in general, ‘optimize’.

1956, H[erbert] A. Simon, “Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment”, in Psychological Review, volume 63, number 2, page 129:

[T]here are two contrasting types of decision-making mentalities, maximizing and satisficing. If you're choosing a marriage partner, you probably want to maximize. You want to find the very best person you are totally in love with. […] But politics is not like that. Politics is a prosaic activity most of the time. You probably want to satisfice, pick the person who's good enough, who seems reasonably responsible.

2015 December 4, David Brooks, “No, Donald Trump won't win [print version: International New York Times, 5–6 December 2015, page 9]”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 2015-12-16:

(sociology, intransitive) Of human behavior: to make a choice that suffices to fulfill the minimum requirements to achieve an objective, without special regard for utility maximization or optimization of one's preferences.


family of orientation

en-noun

family of orientation (plural families of orientation)

(sociology) The family in which a person grows up.


family of procreation

family of procreation (plural families of procreation)

(sociology) A family that is formed when a couple have their first child.


apologetic apostrophe

apologetic apostrophe (plural apologetic apostrophes)

While not all agreements were carried out as planned, what this attempt at consistency achieved in Smith's case was to give his poetry the appearance of a distinctive literary language, related to English, but having its own identity and forms, and without the distraction for the reader of the apologetic apostrophes.

2009, Margery Palmer McCulloch, Scottish Modernism and Its Contexts 1918-1959:

(sociolinguistics, orthography) An apostrophe added to a Scots word in order to give the appearance that it is a contraction of an English word.


bandwagon effect

(sociology) the observation that people often do or believe what they think many other people do.


herding instinct

herding instinct (plural herding instincts)

(sociology) A social tendency in humans to identify with and model many behaviors and beliefs after a larger group of individuals with whom they identify.


herd behaviour

herd behaviour (countable and uncountable, plural herd behaviours)

(sociology) the tendency of a group of individuals (a herd) to react coherently without there being any coordination between them. The term may be applied to animals, or to human phenomena such as stock market bubbles and behaviour in political demonstrations.


herd instinct

But as we've seen at Westminster, the herd instinct is powerful and when the herd moves, it moves.

7 July 2022, Boris Johnson, resignation speech:


digital divide

As schools were closed, the digital divide meant that more affluent families with computers, iPads and good internet connections had a very different home educational (and informational, social and entertainment) situation than families without these amenities.

2020 April 17, Rebecca Solnit, “Coronavirus does discriminate, because that’s what humans do”, in The Guardian:

information technology
information technology

(information technology, sociology, neologism) The gap between those with regular, effective access to digital technologies (and the computer literacy to use them) and those without it.


deviance

deviance (countable and uncountable, plural deviances)

(sociology) Actions or behaviors that violate formal and informal cultural norms such as laws and customs.


testimonio

From Latin American Spanish testimonio (“testimony”).

1988, Sommer D. "Not Just a Personal Story: Women’s Testimonios and the Plural Self". In: Schenck C, Brodzki B Life/Lines: Theoretical Essays on Women’s Autobiography. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press

1989 (Spring), John Beverley "The Margin at the Center: On Testimonio (Testimonial Narrative)" MFS Modern Fiction Studies Volume 35, Number 1, pp. 11-28 doi:10.1353/mfs.0.0923

(sociology) A first-hand account of politically charged experiences; an oral history narrative.


recuperation

recuperation (usually uncountable, plural recuperations)

Borrowed from Latin recuperātiō. By surface analysis, recuperate + -ion.

Coordinate term: cooptation

[Raoul Vaneigem] I have nothing in common with the spectacular recuperation of a project that, in my case, has remained revolutionary throughout.

2009 May, Hans Ulrich Obrist, “In Conversation with Raoul Vaneigem”, in e-flux, archived from the original on 2009-09-07:

(politics, sociology) Process by which radical or subversive ideas are co-opted by mainstream society.


ascription

ascription (usually uncountable, plural ascriptions)

(sociology) The stratification of people according to inborn characteristics (such as race or sex) outside of their control.


socius

(sociology) According to Gilles Deleuze, a social body that takes credit for production.


gynecocracy

gynecocracy (countable and uncountable, plural gynecocracies)

gynecocracies (plural)
gynaecocracy (alternative)

Gynaecocracy may not, however, be an idyllic affair.

1999, Jacqueline Rose, “Go girl”, in London Review of Books, section 21.19:

(government, sociology) Government or rule by women, or a society with such leadership.


identitarianism

identitarianism (countable and uncountable, plural identitarianisms)

"The radical feminists always wanted in their frantic identitarianism to eliminate the difference between the sexes" (p. 96)

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, The Menace of the Herd, or Procrustes at Large, 1943, e.g.

(sociology) Politics based on social identity.

Needless to add, this augurs badly for the future of the GRECE’s identitarianism, for it now tacitly acknowledges the right of non-Europeans to occupy and partition European lands.

2004, Michael O'Meara, New Culture, New Right: Anti-liberalism in Postmodern Europe, page 78:

Identitarianism is probably the most well-known of these ‘new’ ideologies, despite its fairly recent emergence on the political scene. Employing the lambda symbol, identitarianism has gained increasing purchase amongst youth across western Europe, and France in particular, growing out of the (European) New Right (Nouvelle Droite), which dates to the 1970s and GRECE (Research and Study Group on European Civilization).

2020, Tim Nieguth, editor, Nationalism and Popular Culture, Routledge, →ISBN:

While the concept of remigration has long existed in academia, its hijacking by the far right on social media appears to have begun about a decade ago when French adherents to identitarianism, an ethno-nationalist movement, organised what they described as the inaugural meeting in Paris on remigration.

2024 October 3, Ashifa Kassam, “How remigration became a buzzword for global far right”, in The Guardian:

Counter Extremism Project
w:Counter Extremism Project

(sociology, politics, often capitalized) A far-right political movement and philosophy that seeks to preserve European ethnic and cultural identity against the perceived threats of immigration, Islam, and globalization.


field theory

field theory (countable and uncountable, plural field theories)

(sociology) A theory concerning the relationship between social actors and local social orders.


communitas

communitas (countable and uncountable, plural communitates)

Unadapted borrowing from Latin commūnitās. Doublet of community.

ubor

Monastic life, pilgrimage, bonds of friendship formed among the group of young initiates, contemporary teenage counter-culture movements are all good examples of communitates.

2012, Helena Bassil-Morozow, The Trickster in Contemporary Film, →ISBN, pages 17–18:

(sociology) An unstructured community of common experience.

A sense of harmony with the universe is made evident and the whole planet is felt to be communitas.

1986, Victor W. Turner, The Anthropology of Experience, University of Illinois Press, page 43:

The achievement of communitas is the pilgrim's fundamental motivation.

1986, Victor W. Turner, Contesting the Sacred, Routledge, published 1991:

Their focus is on group bonding, and the euphoric, almost transcendental experience of becoming one with the music and the crowd (which sounds like a version of what the anthropologist Victor Turner called ‘communitas’—an intense, intimate, liberating kind of group bonding, experienced only in ‘liminal’ states).

[2004, Kate Fox, “Rules of Sex”, in Watching the English, Hodder & Stoughton, →ISBN, page 330:

Liminality, in other words, engenders communitas by levelling social distinctions while at the same time destabilizing normative structures and inspiring criticism.

2013, Isher-Paul Sahni, “More than Horseplay”, in Studies in Popular Culture, volume 35, page 81:

(sociology) The very spirit of community; an intense community spirit, the feeling of great social equality, solidarity, and togetherness.


institutional

/ˌɪnstɪˈtʃuːʃənəl/

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Usmaan (Middle river exports)-institutional.wav

If vocational counseling to help the individual find his peculiar niche has elements of the impulse conception of self, the idea that a person can make of himself what he will, that one chooses a task and then works at it, is the view of institutionals.

1981, Gregory Prentice Stone, Harvey A. Farberman, Social Psychology Through Symbolic Interaction, page 206:

For institutionals the self is revealed through adherence to a high standard, especially in spite of adverse conditions.

1988, Michael R. Wood, Louis A. Zurcher Jr., The Development of a Postmodern Self, page 22:

For the institutionals, hypocrisy consists of failing to live up to one's standards.

1999, Roy F. Baumeister, The Self in Social Psychology:

(sociology) A person whose sense of self is based on institutionalized values and standards, as opposed to their tastes and impulses.


Southern hospitality

(sociology) The reputation for people in the U.S. South to be particularly warm and welcoming to visitors.


socialization

en-noun

socialization (countable and uncountable, plural socializations)

socializations (plural)
socialisation (alternative)

From socialize + -ation or social + -ization.

Socialization skills are important things to learn in kindergarten.

(sociology, psychology) The process of learning how to live in a way acceptable to one's own society, said especially about children.

общуване

sociology: the process of learning one’s culture


essentialism

essentialism (countable and uncountable, plural essentialisms)

Coordinate term: essentialization

A closer examination of the components of essentialism is required for a better understanding of the relation between essentialism and prejudice toward the two social categories of interest in this dissertation, African Americans and gay men.

2007, Luisa Fernanda Ramirez, Dual Intergroup Meanings of Essentialism, →ISBN, page 8:

Like most of those who use the term, I continue to think essentialism a bad thing, but what exactly is wrong with it? Is it a matter of degree, a question of context or something that must be avoided at all costs?

2013, Anne Phillips, Gender and Culture, →ISBN:

I think we need to sophisticate our understanding of cultural essentialisms, including gender ones, because it might help us deal better with issues of resistance.

2013, Brackette Williams, Women Out of Place, →ISBN:

Colonial discourse relied heavily on such essentialisms wherein a race or ethnic group was first represented as possessing certain key features and then those very features were 'applied' to all members of the group.

2015, Pramod K. Nayar, The Postcolonial Studies Dictionary, →ISBN, page 68:

Previous literature tracks the trajectory of gender theories from biological essentialism to social construction.

2020, Annie Jones, “Incels and the Manosphere: Tracking Men's Movements Online”, in University of Central Florida, page 5:

The appearance underlines past incidents in which Pinker has encountered criticism for his association with advocates of so-called “human biodiversity”, which other academics have called a “rebranding” of racial genetic essentialism and scientific racism.

2025 June 7, Jason Wilson, “Harvard author Steven Pinker appears on podcast linked to scientific racism”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:

(sociology) The view that all members of certain groups of people (such as those with the same race, gender, age, or sexual orientation) have common, essential traits inherent to the defining feature of the group; (also) behavior or statement(s) that reflect such a view.


ideal-seeking behavior

(sociology) Behavior that is characterized by both the desire and the ability to progress towards an ideal by choosing a new goal when a previous one has been met or the effort to meet it has failed.


alcohology

(sociology) The study of the effects of alcohol; on living organisms, people or social environments.


foodway

From food + way; in the sense of "alimentary canal", by extension from airway.

Coordinate term: speechway

(sociology, chiefly in the plural) The food traditions or customs of a group of people, including their culinary and nutritional practices and related social aspects.


polyculture

polyculture (countable and uncountable, plural polycultures)

What we have here is not a 'multiculture' as it is represented in multiculturalism, not a pluralist order of discrete patches of culture, all somehow, 'equally valid' within the polity, but—to form a Greek/Roman Creole—a polyculture, or at any rate a collection of cultural entities that are not (a) discrete and complete in themselves; (b) that are not in any sense 'intrinsically' 'equal'; and (c) are active together and hence bound up with change.

2003 (originally 1992), Roger Hewitt, Language, Youth and the Destabilisation of Ethnicity, R. Harris and B. Rampton (eds.), page 190

Marsdsen, R. (1993) 'Global Monoculture, Multiculture and Polyculture', Social Research 60 (3): 493–523.

2003, Angus Cameron, Ronen Palan, The Imagined Economies of Globalization, SAGE, →ISBN, page 179:

Finally, but equal in importance, this book aims to engage with the ongoing dialogue among scholars of race and ethnicity in America, specifically regarding conversations on the issues of multiculture, polyculture, and the persistence of race.

2007, Jeffrey F. L. Partridge, Beyond Literary Chinatown, American Ethnic and Cultural S:

Europe/the EU's internal collective group identity is polycultural and not yet multicultural as per its “United in Diversity” motto. The concept of polyculture is a borrowed term from the discipline of agriculture. […] This paper adds a third definition to these two definitions by proposing to include the dominant culture within the fold of the polyculture to make it a multicultural society.

2014, Kenan Aksu, Turkey: A Regional Power in the Making, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, →ISBN, page 128:

(sociology, uncommon) A multiculture; a polycultural society, sometimes especially one in which multiple cultures exist without one dominating.


habitus

habitus (usually uncountable, plural habiti or habitus or habituses)

habiti (plural)
habitus (plural)
habituses (plural)

From Latin habitus (“habit”), from habeō (“have; maintain”). The plural habiti is a misconstruction, as the Latin plural is in fact habitūs. habiti may have been influenced by Latin habitī, the plural of the participle habitus; however, it is not the etymon of the English term.

A wrestler could gain the rank of ōzeki based on his competitive achievements, but the promotion to yokozuna implied the presence of a certain habitus than embodied the quintessential traditional Japaneseness.

2019, Raúl Sánchez García, “Reformulation, expansion, and hybridisation of Japanese martial arts”, in The Historical Sociology of Japanese Martial Arts (Routledge Research in Sport, Culture and Society), Abingdon, Oxfordshire; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, part III (Martial artists):

(sociology) The lifestyle, values, dispositions and expectations of particular social groups that are acquired through the activities and experiences of everyday life.


detournement

detournement (countable and uncountable, plural detournements)

detournements (plural)
détournement (alternative)

(sociology) The reuse of elements of mainstream media to produce a subversive message.


dehabilitation

(sociology) The process of social estrangement and progressive loosening of social bonds between an individual and their family and society as a result of long-term residence in an institution.


intellectualism

intellectualism (countable and uncountable, plural intellectualisms)

(sociology) The use of mental attributes as a criterion or value.


transactional

en-adj

transactional (comparative more transactional, superlative most transactional)

more transactional (comparative)
most transactional (superlative)

Musk’s Israel tour was transparently transactional and frankly insulting. The antisemitic sentiment Musk endorsed had nothing to do with Israel; “replacement theory” is generally an unsupported allegation that Jews and other immigrants in the US and Europe are destroying Western civilization.

2023 November 28, Jill Filipovic, “Opinion: Elon Musk’s Israel tour was transparently transactional and insulting”, in CNN:

(psychology, sociology) Based on value derived from transactions rather than on morals, ethics, or principles; pragmatic or amoral rather than moral.


sheltered workshop

en-noun

sheltered workshop (plural sheltered workshops)

(sociology) A place where persons with limited mental ability can work in a safe environment.


Merton thesis

(sociology) A theory that significant developments in the modern world have a positive correlation with Protestant pietism, similar to Weber's link between success and the Protestant ethic.


iron cage

(sociology) A theory proposed by Max Weber which argues that rationalization and rules trap humans in a figurative "cage" of thought.


gynocracy

gynocracy (countable and uncountable, plural gynocracies)

(government, sociology) Synonym of gynecocracy.


standard language

standard language (plural standard languages)

In modern standard languages, norms of usage often seem to be superimposed by prescriptive norms.

2014, Stephan Elspaß, Prescriptive norms and norms of usage in nineteenth-century German, University of Salzburg [Gijsbert Rutten, Rik Vosters, Wim Vandenbussche, Norms and Usage in Language History, 1600–1900: A sociolinguistic and comparative perspective, John Benjamins Publishing Company] p. 303

(sociolinguistics) A form of a language that is institutionally promoted, regarded as the most correct or neutral variety, and is used by a population for public and formal purposes.

Some remain clusters of dialects like those of the Pamirs; others are at varying levels of stabilisation; some may be young standard languages, having only recently achieved that status; [...]

1978, James E. Alatis, International Dimensions of Bilingual Education, Georgetown University Press, page xii:

Not all standard languages have the backing of institutions such as the Académie française. English is a good example of a standard language without such a regulatory body.

1994, Suzanne Romaine, Language in Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 85:

(sociolinguistics) A language that has a standard form as one of its varieties; a language that has undergone standardization.


mesolect

[...] one characteristic of the mesolect seems to be that it contains, not merely forms from the polar lects, but forms which in function, if not always in phonetic shape, are peculiar to itself.

1973 Sep, Derek Bickerton, “The Nature of a Creole Continuum”, in Language, 49(3), page 642:

(sociolinguistics) A variety of speech that is midway between the acrolect and the basilect.


anomic

en-adj

anomic (comparative more anomic, superlative most anomic)

more anomic (comparative)
most anomic (superlative)

Anglo-Indians (Eurasians) ceased to be counted as a separate category although we know from other evidence that many of that community, beleaguered and anomic as they often felt themselves to be, remained in railroad service (Bear, 2007).

2012 August 3, John Hurd, Ian J. Kerr, India’s Railway History: A Research Handbook (Handbook of Oriental Studies: Section Two: South Asia; 27), Leiden: Brill, →ISBN, page 22:

(sociology) Socially disorganized, disoriented or alienated.

anomický

socially disorganized, disoriented or alienated


gatekeep

en-verb

gatekeep (third-person singular simple present gatekeeps, present participle gatekeeping, simple past and past participle gatekept)

gatekeeps (present singular third-person)
gatekeeping (participle present)
gatekept (participle past)
gatekept (past)
gate-keep (alternative)

From gate + keep, as back-formation from gatekeeper.

(sociology) To limit (sometimes manipulatively, rather than directly) how much of a role another party, often a spouse, has in some task.


audism

From audio + -ism, modelled after racism and sexism. Coined by American academic Tom Humphries in 1975.

coinage

(sociology) Discrimination against deaf people in favor of hearing people.


reinscribe

en-verb

reinscribe (third-person singular simple present reinscribes, present participle reinscribing, simple past and past participle reinscribed)

reinscribes (present singular third-person)
reinscribing (participle present)
reinscribed (participle past)
reinscribed (past)

This ambivalent anality both parodied national and gendered fantasies of “hardness” at the same time that it drew on dynamics of racial and queer mimesis to reinscribe hegemonic (white/ straight) masculinity.

2022, Marisol Cortez, “Ambivalent Anality: Revisiting the Queer Ecology of "the Jackass Moment"”, in Media+Environment:

(sociology) To reproduce an idea in a new context or manifestation, typically in a way that reinforces it or extends its influence.


microanalysis

en-noun

microanalysis (countable and uncountable, plural microanalyses)

(sociology) the analysis of individual or community social activity e.g. family relationships.


prestation

From Latin praestatio (“a performing, paying”), from praestare: compare French prestation.

der

(sociology, anthropology) A gift in the context of a non-market society; a giving that takes place in a non-economic sphere


structuration

en-noun

structuration (countable and uncountable, plural structurations)

(sociology) A theory proposed by Anthony Giddens in an attempt to reconcile theoretical dichotomies of social systems such as agency/structure, subjective/objective, and micro/macro perspectives.


FSW

(sociology) Initialism of female sex worker.


literary language

Literary languages have been enriched by dialects and have at the same time assisted the levelling out of dialectical differences which in its turn has contributed to ….

1977, Magomet Izmaylovich Isayev, National languages in the USSR: problems and solutions, Прогресс, p. 316

I would note that almost 12% of the population of the SRCroatia are Serbs and that they are obliged to use the "Croatian literary language" for official purposes even though this is not their native language.

1990, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs. Subcommittee on International Operations, Views on the Serbo-Croatian Language Service at the Voice of America:

Gaj argued that the establishment of a common literary language was essential for the development of an Illyrian national consciousness and he attempted to bring together the three main dialects used by the Southern Slavs...

2003, Alex J. Bellamy, The Formation of Croatian National Identity, page 44:

The Erzya and Moksha population, especially in urban areas, has become increasingly exposed to Russian; within this context, both the literary languages and the dialects have been affected to a considerable extent. In the course of being update the literary languages have experienced radical changes. An abundance of Russian terminology has been introduced in dictionaries; grammars have been prescribing the use of concurrent forms of the native and Russian languages as a norm.

2013, Suomalais-ugrilainen Seura, Mémoires de la Société finno-ougrienne, Volume 268 of Suomalais-ugrilaisen Seuran toimituksia, Nimilehti painettu Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran kirjapainossa, →ISBN, page 14:

As they explain, 'the literary language is first of all a collection of expressive habits and customs, and to preserve the purity of the literary language can mean nothing other than to preserve these habits and customs' (Guberina and Krsic/ 1940: 77).

2014, K. Langston, A. Peti-Stantic, Language Planning and National Identity in Croatia:

(sociolinguistics, Slavistics) A language variety used as an institutional norm in a community, opposed to vernacular dialects; a standard language.

gjuhë letrare

supraregional idiom — see also standard language, standard