Atticism

noun Atticisms · Atticisme

1. uncountable 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.). The ſame Summer, the Thebans demoliſhed the walles of the Theſpians, laying Atticiſme to their charge.
2. countable, singular, singular only, uncountable 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 arr
3. broadly, countable, dated, historical, singular, singular only The stylistic principles of Greek Atticism in application to other languages, especially to Latin.
4. countable, singular, singular only An expression or idiom characteristic of or peculiar to Attic Greek, especially an elegant and refined, if grammatically irregular, usage. By the Cardinals own confeſsion, this Agapetus liued at Conſtantinople in Iuſtinians time: where it was a great matter for him, no doubt, in ſo long time, to learn to make ſuch a Greek booke as this is; which yet for the ſtile and Atticiſmes, comes a great deale ſhort of Baronius commendation.
5. broadly, countable, singular, singular only A refined felicity or well-turned phrase, especially one deemed ungrammatical. (In Newcome, aposiopesis, dislocation, and inverse attraction, respectively.) There while they acted, and overacted, among other young ſcholars, I was a ſpectator; they thought themſelves gallant men, and I thought them fools, they made ſport, and I laught, they miſpronounc’t and I miſlik’t, and to make up the atticiſme, they were out, and I hiſt.