prescriptivist

English

Etymology

prescriptive +‎ -ist

Noun

prescriptivist (plural prescriptivists)

1. Someone who lays down rules regarding language usage, or who believes that traditional norms of language usage should be upheld.

Adjective

prescriptivist (comparative more prescriptivist, superlative most prescriptivist)

1. Having a tendency to prescribe.
   • 2012, James Lambert, “Beyond Hobson-Jobson: A new lexicography for Indian English”, in World Englishes‎^[1], page 312:

     In short, they tend to present Indian English as nothing more than "standard" English with a select collection of lexical peculiarities tacked on, as it were, many of which would be regarded as "errors" by prescriptivist language scholars.

Synonyms

• prescriptionist

Antonyms

• descriptivist

Related terms

• prescribe
• prescriptivism
• prescriptivistic

See also

• grammarian