dragonism

English

Etymology

dragon +‎ -ism

Noun

dragonism (uncountable)

1. (archaic) watchful guardianship
   • 1826, Caroline Anne Southey, Solitary Hour:

     Those who pique themselves on "l'eloquence du billet;" those fair Scribblerinas just emancipated from boarding-school restraint, or from the dragonism of their governesses, just beginning to pour out their pretty souls in the refined intercourse of sentimental, confidential, ineffable correspondence, […]

   • 1848, William Holmes McGuffey, “On Letter Writing”, in McGuffey's Newly Revised Eclectic Fourth Reader, page 279:

     Those who pique themselves on the elegant style of their billets, or those fair scriblerinas just emancipated from boarding school restraints, or the dragonism of their governess, just beginning to taste the refined enjoyments of sentimental, confidential, soul-breathing correspondence with some Angelina, Seraphina, or Laura Matilda; to indite beautiful little notes, with long tailed letters, upon vellum paper, with pink margins, sealed with sweet mottoes, and dainty devices, the whole deliciously perfumed with musk and attar of roses;

   • 1870, The Millennial Harbinger - Volume 41, page 423:

     An American sectarian, who has always lived within the high walls and in the close atmosphere of our intense sect-life here, and has always been accustomed to the dragonism of sect-authority and sect-jealousy, —is utterly amazed when for the first time he looks over his native sect-walls and comes to see the freedom of thought and utterance within the old churches of Europe.

2. Despotism; the leadership of a tyrant.
   • 1856, Joseph Frederic Berg, The Stone and the Image, Or, the American Republic, the Bane and Ruin of Despotism, page 215:

     Fix your eye, then, as I attempted to do, on the places and time when the Puritans were driven to extremities by the persucutions of Jesuits, [a church with temporal power,] and other enemies of the pure, evangelical truth; and see to what region fro the body of the best of that people , did in fact flee from the face of the Papal dragon, [and those who exerted the spiritual, selfish tyranny denoted by dragonism,] in some far distant realm.

   • 1866, John Davis, The Patriarch of Western Nova Scotia: Life and Times of the Late Rev. Harris Harding, page 266:

     I fear dragonism, in some form or other, will deluge Europe, the British Isles, and various parts of the world besides, with torrents of human blood.

   • 2020, Kadir I. Natho, History of Adyghe Literature:

     The author narrates about horrors brought about by “dragonism,” which forces us to eat dry corn tops, the harvest reaped, by the order of the dragon, is given all to the state, what dooms to hunger death both old and young.

3. (obsolete) Nonsense; unrealistic ideas.
   • 1837, Ethan Smith, Key to the Revelation, page 300:

     It will be a last effort in behalf of a darling cause. Dragonism, infidelity, and false religion, will now be found, each making its last effort!

   • 1862 April, Edward A Lawrence, “Swedenborg's Theory of the Divine-Human”, in Henry Boynton Smith, ‎ James Manning Sherwood, editor, American Presbyterian and Theological Review, page 272:

     These doctrines, of which the inspire apostle is admitted as the "chief corner-stone", he characterizes as "Dragonism", a "congeries of falsities", and as "favoring the natural and sensual man".

   • 1960, Saul Bellow, The Noble Savage, page 99:

     The Vortex lasted from 1914 to 1916. I am quoting out of context, but nothing in what he says before or after modifies the dragonism of this statement: "That World War I dissipated the Vortex may yet prove to have been its most far-reaching effect."

   • 2007, Harold Bloom, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, page 23:

     Hawthorne may have felt that one bouncing baby should be enough to drive the dragonism ("cant and nonsense") out of a radical woman.

4. Dragon lore.
   • 1858, John Bull, The Treasury of Light, page 440:

     So that he, as the god Janus of pagan dragonism, sitteth in the more modern temple of Tau-tau-r-ism, shewing himself, and declaring to the world, that he is god (Janus) of the last dispensation, to whom the dragon or devil gave his chair, possessing the keys of the Dor's, Thor's or Tor's hole or hall, which open and shut the gate or way leading from light immortal, eternal glory, to the regions of the damned.

   • 1971, Hazard Adams, The Truth about Dragons, page 22:

     I've heard all the human lore of Eastern Dragonism, all the way back to the primal yin and yang and the plenitude of explanations of how it's best done .

   • 2010, Magus M. Douglas Hockett, Dark Poetry from A Gothic View:

     He also teaches Rite and Ritual based on innumerous paths from Solomonic Rite and Ritual (the basis for Ordo Templ Orientis [OTO], the Golden Dawn, etc., etc., etc.) to Wicca to Paganism to Dragonism/Vamprism/Therianism/Lycanthropy to Satanism to Luciferianism to Necromancy to Saneria and the Yezidi Tibe Paths of Risen and Fallen Angelic Worship.

   • 2018, Michael Hanne, ‎ Anna A. Kaal, Narrative and Metaphor in Education: Look Both Ways:

     However, the choice of imaginary subjects on the school timetable is disturbing —"dragonism” and “vampirism” are equated with “religious education” which might be interpreted as children being captives of Catholic education.