punctuationism

punctuationism

English

Etymology

    From punctuation + -ism.

    Noun

    punctuationism (uncountable)

    1. (politics) In evolutionary biology, belief that evolution does not proceed at a steady pace, but instead is characterized by periods of stasis, punctuated by brief (within several hundred-thousand years) periods of rapid change.
      • 1986, Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker[1], W. W. Norton & Company, published 2015, →ISBN:
        Gould has misled himself by his own rhetorical emphasis on the purely poetic or literary resemblance between punctuationism, on the one hand, and true saltationism on the other.

    See also

    Anagrams