Reference meaning
Atticism
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Attachment to, collaboration with, favouring of, or siding with Athens or Athenians, especially in the context of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.E.).
Other meanings
2. noun
The enduring rhetorical movement, begun in the 1st century B.C.E., whose members strove to emulate the style of the best Attic orators of that Classical period; especially in contrast with Asianism or Hellenism. (Its leading early proponent, Dionysius of Halicarnassus [c. 60–p. 7 B.C.E.], identified Lysias [c. 445–380 B.C.E.] as “the perfect model of the Attic dialect”, whose virtues he enumerates to be “purity of language, correct dialect, the presentation of ideas by means of standard, not figurative expressions; clarity, brevity, concision, terseness, vivid representation…, the pleasing arrangement of words after the manner of ordinary speech…, charm and a sense of timing which regulates everything else”.)
3. noun
The stylistic principles of Greek Atticism in application to other languages, especially to Latin.
4. noun
An expression or idiom characteristic of or peculiar to Attic Greek, especially an elegant and refined, if grammatically irregular, usage.
Source and scope
This definition is reproduced from English Wiktionary, sense en-Atticism-en-noun-MhhnmRms, under the CC BY-SA 4.0. It has not yet received VocabularyBase editorial review. Read the source and license details.