Meanings
nounphilocaly (uncountable)
- uncountableThe love of beauty.
- uncountableMeaning in use: focused on things that should be loved. For example, philocaly is the virtue of prioritizing profoundly important things over lush, hedonistic things (i.e., "Participant chose the safety of a child over the immediate satisfaction of a chocolate bar."
- uncountableConcept often seen in Relational Frame Theory/Training/Therapy (RFT) to mean putting longterm goals ahead of short-term goals, as a demonstration of an organism's capacity to do rule-governed behavior.
- uncountableConcept often seen in Radical Behaviorism to refer to putting community needs ahead of direct needs. Usage example, "A Skinnerian explanation of an adult facing danger to save a child or people going to war rather than tolerating tyranny, is a mixture of natural endowments and a history of verbal reinforcement of contingencies that put remote reinforcers ahead of direct personal safety, resulting in valuing biological mechanisms capable of overriding innate personal-survival mechanisms."
Origin
From Ancient Greek. See φίλος (phílos, “loving”) and κάλλος (kállos, “beauty”).
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
APA
philocaly. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/philocaly
MLA
“philocaly.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/philocaly. Accessed November 2, 2026.
Chicago
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “philocaly,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/philocaly.
Source: philocaly on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.