Meanings
plural macaronicisms
- countablerhetoricuncountableThe use of macaronic language; The mixing of two or more languages in a single work.
Readers of seventeenth-century Polish texts— from baroque poetry through polemical pamphlets to forensic prose—are used to deciphering Polish-Latin macaronicisms.
2013, David A. Frick, Kith, Kin, and Neighbors3 more examples
Before quitting this division of macaronicism, we must not forget the amusing specimen given by Molière in the troisième intermede of Le Malade Imaginaire , where Argan the invalid is to be admitted a doctor .
1831, William Sandys, Specimens of Macaronic Poetry, page xvKlymasz argues that macaronicism is a comic device in The Street Where I Live, but he stops short of discussing the ways Haas uses macaronic humour to undermine the dominance of Anglo-Canadian culture.
2005, Lisa Grekul, Leaving Shadows: Literature in English by Canada's UkrainiansThe playfulness of macaronicism may have been another contributory factor: Omnegatherum, that is to say, may be a self-deprecating acknowledgement of the impossibility of the encyclopaedic dream and the inability of any compiler or miscellanist to contain a total body of knowledge within the bounds of a single book.
2018, Angus Vine, Miscellaneous Order
Origin
Cite this entry
macaronicism. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/macaronicism
“macaronicism.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/macaronicism. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “macaronicism,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/macaronicism.
Source: macaronicism on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.