SOLECISM • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Solecism

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noun

Solecism n.

An impropriety or incongruity of language in the combination of words or parts of a sentence; esp., deviation from the idiom of a language or from the rules of syntax. "A barbarism may be in one word; a solecism must be of more."

Any inconsistency, unfitness, absurdity, or impropriety, as in deeds or manners. "Caesar, by dismissing his guards and retaining his power, committed a dangerous solecism in politics." "The idea of having committed the slightest solecism in politeness was agony to him."

Synonyms: Barbarism; impropriety; absurdity.

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Etymology of 'Solecism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Solecism" Quotes from Famous Books

... affects fashionable curricles, and enjoys all the consideration a pair of good horses can give. He rides a blood bay in Rotten Row, but rides badly, and is detected by galloping, or some other solecism; his dress and liveries are always overdone, the money shows on every thing about him. He has familiar abbreviations for the names of all the fast men about town; calls this Lord "Jimmy," 'tother Chess, ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... propriety of the measures recommended in the one case than in the other, in the obligations of ultimate decision there can be no difference. In the language of the Constitution, "all the legislative powers" which it grants "are vested in the Congress of the United States." It would be a solecism in language to say that any portion of these is not included ...

— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... that, in these two texts, the word might have been used with a different meaning from that which it bore in all the others, coupled with the assumption that the meaning was this or that, is self-evident: it is not so much a religious error as a philological solecism; unparalleled, so far as I know, in any other science but that ...

— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... great gap between. Montesquieu said, he often lost an idea before he could find words for it: yet he dictated, by way of saving time, to an amanuensis. This last is, in my opinion, a vile method, and a solecism in authorship. Horne Tooke, among other paradoxes, used to maintain, that no one could write a good style who was not in the habit of talking and hearing the sound of his own voice. He might as well have said that ...

— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... retort upon our polished dialect, that it has gone over to the other extreme in avoidance of the I, using me in many sentences where I ought most decidedly to be employed. It was me [Footnote: I am aware that some of our lexicographers have attempted a defence of this solecism by deriving it from the French c'est moi; but, I think it is from their affected dislike of direct egotism; and that, whenever they can, they avoid the I in order that they might not be thought at once vulgar and egotistic!] is constantly dinned in our ears for it was ...

— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings

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