Meanings
plural onomatoclasts
- derogatoryrareEastern OrthodoxyAn opponent of onomatodoxy.
An onomatoclast sees a face as a mere mask, perceives an icon as piece of wood and hears a name as an empty sound.
2015, Paweł Rojek, “Onomatodoxy and the Problem of Constitution: Florensky on Scientific and Manifest Images of the World”, in Faith and Reason in Russian Thought, page 1072 more examples
[…] they at first were unable to present to the onomatoclasts the teaching concerning the divinity of the Name of God that they knew through their experience of prayer, but were not always able to articulate in words.
2001, Tatiana Senina, “The Divine Name Controversy”, in History, Bible, Science, archived from the original on 01 Dec 2021According to the self-proclaimed apologists of imjaslavie the onomatoclasts, in rejecting the divinity of the revealed names and God's undivided presence therein, sided with Palamas's opponent Barlaam of Calabria, who had denied the full divinity of God's energies and their inseparability from His essence.
2014, Lara Sels, “Gregory of Nyssa's Contra Eunomium and Onomatodoxy in Russian Theology”, in Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium III: An English Translation with Commentary and Supporting Studies, page 665
Origin
- Medieval Greekκλάω“to break”
- Englishonomatoclast
From onomato- (back-formation from onomatodoxy) + -clast, by analogy with iconoclast, from Medieval Greek κλάω (kláō, “to break”).
More words from Medieval Greek
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
onomatoclast. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/onomatoclast
“onomatoclast.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/onomatoclast. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “onomatoclast,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/onomatoclast.
Source: onomatoclast on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.