Meanings
- not comparableUnifying; having the power to shape disparate things into a unified whole.
2003: he … developed a doctrine of the organic (‘esemplastic’) imagination, over and against the passive and mechanical faculty of ‘fancy’ — Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason (Penguin 2004, p. 405)
1 more example
1893: all the verses when taken together … are deficient in harmony, and consequently there is little or no fusion. The esemplastic power of the writer's feeling was not strong enough, did not extend beyond the individual verse. — Hiram Corson, A Primer of English Verse (pp. 21–22)
Origin
From Greek ἐς ‘into’ + ἕν + πλαστικός (from πλάσσειν ‘to mould’). Coined by Coleridge, probably after German ineinsbildung ‘forming into one’.
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with esemplastic
Cite this entry
esemplastic. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/esemplastic
“esemplastic.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/esemplastic. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “esemplastic,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/esemplastic.
Source: esemplastic on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.