polyglottism

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pol·y·glot

(pŏl′ē-glŏt′)

adj.

Speaking, writing, written in, or composed of several languages.

1. A person having a speaking, reading, or writing knowledge of several languages.

2. A book, especially a Bible, containing several versions of the same text in different languages.

3. A mixture or confusion of languages.

[French polyglotte, from Greek poluglōttos : polu-, poly- + glōtta, tongue, language.]

pol′y·glot′ism, pol′y·glot′tism n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

polyglottism

the ability to use or to speak several languages. — polyglot, n., adj.

See also: Language

Mentioned in ?

language

References in periodicals archive ?

Having been informed by a tradition that fertilised a Byzantine and Western artistic polyglottism, it should not be surprising that when El Greco arrived in Italy he found recourse to explore Italian Renaissance painting with determined focus and intensity, quickly discarding visible signs of his Cretan training.

Becoming El Greco

Moreover, made as it is "out of the different coloured strands of three languages", their conversation virtually becomes a Modernist artifact in its own right, formally enacting the polyglottism of Eliot's Waste Land or Ezra Pound's Cantos as well as thematically meditating upon such texts.