prescriptivist

American  

[pri-skrip-tuh-vist] / prɪˈskrɪp tə vɪst /

noun

1. a writer, teacher, or supporter of prescriptive grammar.

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adjective

1. of, relating to, or based on prescriptive grammar.

Other Word Forms

• prescriptivism noun

Etymology

Origin of prescriptivist

First recorded in 1950–55; prescriptive + -ist

Example Sentences

To behold a grammatical descriptivist at war with a grammatical prescriptivist who happens to be her twin is truly an uncommon pleasure.

From New York Times • Feb. 6, 2020

Lionel Shriver, by contrast to McCulloch, is a prescriptivist.

From The New Yorker • Aug. 15, 2019

Do you go out of your way to avoid splitting infinitives, make gargling noises in the “10 items or less” queue, and have strong feelings about the word “whom”? Take a jersey: you’re team prescriptivist.

From The Guardian • Oct. 7, 2017

“There are people who think that the definition of a prescriptivist is a completely ill-informed armchair grammarian who just makes pronouncements on language without any knowledge of how words are actually used,” he says.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jul. 8, 2016

But the book you are holding is avowedly prescriptivist: it consists of several hundred pages in which I am bossing you around.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker