Standard Lemma guide

esemplastic

adj · 1 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

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  • /ɛsɛmˈplæstɪk/
  • rhymes with -æstɪk

1

adj

Meaning 1

Unifying; having the power to shape disparate things into a unified whole.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: not-comparable

Examples

  • 1893: all the verses when taken together ... are deficient in harmony, and consequently there is little or no fusion. The esemplastic power of the writer's feeling was not strong enough, did not extend beyond the individual verse. — Hiram Corson, A Primer of English Verse (pp. 21–22)
  • 2003: he ... developed a doctrine of the organic (‘esemplastic’) imagination, over and against the passive and mechanical faculty of ‘fancy’ — Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason (Penguin 2004, p. 405)

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

History

Etymology

From Greek ἐς ‘into’ + ἕν + πλαστικός (from πλάσσειν ‘to mould’). Coined by Coleridge, probably after German ineinsbildung ‘forming into one’.