macaronicism

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noun

The use of macaronic language; The mixing of two or more languages in a single work.

Scrabble 20

Meanings

nounmacaronicism (countable and uncountable, plural macaronicisms)

plural macaronicisms

  1. 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 Neighbors
    3 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 xv

    Klymasz 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 Ukrainians

    The 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
APA

macaronicism. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/macaronicism

MLA

“macaronicism.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/macaronicism. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “macaronicism,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/macaronicism.

Source: macaronicism on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.