Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Mixture of different breeds; the being of mixed breeds.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun uncountable The condition of being a mongrel
  • noun countable cross-breeding or hybridization

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word mongrelism.

Examples

  • The Normans' attempt to foist their language on their subjects would eventually result in the mongrelism of Middle English which explains modern English's glut of synonyms.

    Gothic buildings: pillars of faith 2011

  • Laiser – aller is as guilty as the actual, stinking mongrelism it gives place to.

    Kangaroo 2004

  • He is not a producer of any other type of value; to breed him out of his family is mongrelism and degeneracy, so we don't want him, even though we could humiliate our American pride through our loved State of Kentucky.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 Various

  • The race, in truth, grows mongrel, and the protest against that mongrelism only serves to drive in the fact.

    A Book of Prefaces 1918

  • He was of the bull-terrier variety, coarsened through much mongrelism and a dubious and varied ancestry.

    Spare Hours John Brown 1846

  • Polynesians were originally the produce of a mixture of Malays, or some lighter coloured Mongol race with the dark Papuans; but if so, the intermingling took place at such a remote epoch, and has been so assisted by the continued influence of physical conditions and of natural selection, leading to the preservation of a special type suited to those conditions, that it has become a fixed and stable race with no signs of mongrelism, and showing such a decided preponderance of Papuan character, that it can best be classified as a modification of the

    The Malay Archipelago, the land of the orang-utan and the bird of paradise; a narrative of travel, with studies of man and nature — Volume 2 Alfred Russel Wallace 1868

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.