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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A nonstandard usage or grammatical construction.
  2. n. A violation of etiquette.
  3. n. An impropriety, mistake, or incongruity.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. A gross deviation from the settled usages of grammar; a gross grammatical error, such as “I done it” for “I did it.”
  2. n. Loosely, any small blunder in speech.
  3. n. Any unfitness, absurdity, or impropriety, as in behavior; a violation of the conventional rules of society.
  4. n. An incongruity; an inconsistency; that which is incongruous with the nature of things or with its surroundings; an unnatural phenomenon or product; a prodigy; a monster.
  5. n. Synonyms Barbarism, etc. See impropriety.

Wiktionary

  1. n. Error in the use of language, especially an error concerning etiquette.
  2. n. In written language, the intentional use of misspelling and/or incorrect grammar to effect the vernacular of a particular dialect.
  3. n. Any faux pas involving a transgression against the norms of expected behavior.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. 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.
  2. n. Any inconsistency, unfitness, absurdity, or impropriety, as in deeds or manners.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a socially awkward or tactless act

Etymologies

  1. Latin soloecismus, from Greek soloikismos, from soloikizein, to speak incorrectly, from soloikos, speaking incorrectly, after Soloi (Soli), an Athenian colony in Cilicia where a dialect regarded as substandard was spoken.

Examples

  • “Analogously, in the non-criminal spheres the worst solecism is to be different.”

    Stromata Blog:

  • “To purposely concoct older characters of a sunny disposition would be as much of a solecism as deliberately fabricating arrhythmic blacks, spendthrift Jews, slacker Japanese and so on.”

    The Guardian: You're Looking Very Well by Lewis Wolpert – review

  • “• In early editions, the photo caption that accompanied a report of the jailing for life of two members of an east London street gang convicted of the murder of a girl of 16, Agnes Sina-Inakoju, contained the solecism that she "died 36 hours after being killed".”

    The Guardian: Corrections and clarifications

  • “The frequency of this solecism in public notices and signs is most impressive.”

    On the rampant misuse of quotation marks

  • “Everyone wants to apply general principles or knowledge to specific objects, but to do so in English prose by means of the so-called “past unreal conditional” is a solecism because this tense calls for (positively demands) a qualifying phrase beginning with “if,” or the equivalent.”

    Well, they would, wouldn’t they?

  • “Matt, if you have the effrontery to use a solecism like “irregardless” then please at least have the common decency to mispell it.”

    Matthew Yglesias » Big Change

  • “Though he caught only a hint of the movement out of the corner of his eye, Neil was ready to swear that Claire committed the considerable solecism of elbowing Lady Salcombe in the ribs.”

    Simon & Schuster: Shameless

  • “He glowered at her as if she had committed some serious social solecism and took a pair of sunglasses out of the table drawer.”

    Simon & Schuster: Portobello

  • “What the age turns to, when it is cured on a particular boob, is commonly only another solecism, and maybe united worse than the first one.”

    Director Kevin Smith 'Too Fat' To Fly Southwest

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Comments

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  • jaime_d from Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution Mar 6, 2011
  • manilamac Without thinking, I entered solecisms instead of solecism and got a, “first person to look . . .” page. At the last minute I realized this was a simple plural and dropped the “s.” Shouldn’t the first page have asked me, “do you mean . . .”? Oct 1, 2009
  • yarb Citation on insouciance. Jun 28, 2008
  • rolig a slip of the tongue or the pen or the keypad Apr 24, 2008
  • sera solecism is a breach of etiquette Aug 13, 2007

‘solecism’ has been looked up 3116 times, loved by 25 people, added to 124 lists, commented on 5 times, and has a Scrabble score of 12.