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Definition of "onomastic" [on•o•mas•tic]

  • Of, relating to, or explaining a name or names. (adjective)
  • Of or relating to onomastics. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "onomastic" in a sentence
  • "A similar kind of onomastic matrilineage is established through a practice Junod, around the turn of the century, described as the most frequent method of infant-naming among the Tsonga, and through which many of the eldest interviewees had received their birth name: consulting the divining bones to obtain the name of an ancestor so as to kupfuxa (wake up) that ancestor's spirit in the person of the child."
  • "Once the purely linguistic approach has been abandoned, an opportunity has been provided for a new kind of onomastic vision which treats names as names and not just as words with peculiar properties."
  • "This sort of onomastic racial profiling, not surprisingly, is common south of the border, whence our own securibots seem to get all their ideas."