lionism

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English

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WOTD – 23 July 2024

Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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From lion (“big cat (Panthera leo); (figurative) famous person regarded with interest and curiosity; person who shows attributes associated with the lion such as courage, ferocity, or strength”) +‎ -ism (suffix forming names of schools of thought, systems, or theories, or of tendencies of action, behaviour, condition, state, condition, or opinion belonging to a class or group of persons).[1][2]

Sense 1 (“19th-century practice of bringing an interesting person or object into one’s home as entertainment for visitors; state of being such a person or object”) refers to the lions previously on display at a menagerie in the Tower of London, which existed till the 19th century. Sense 4 refers to the Lion of Judah, a hereditary title of Haile Selassie I (1892–1975), the Emperor of Ethiopia, who is revered by some members of the Rastafari movement as the messiah; the lion is thus a symbol of Rastafarianism.

Noun

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lionism (plural lionisms)

  2. (historical)
    1. The 19th-century practice of bringing a lion (“an interesting person or object”) into one’s home as entertainment for visitors.
      • 1832 April, H[arriet] M[artineau], “Art. I.—Heads of the People. The ‘Lion’ of a Party. London, 1839. [...] [book review]”, in The London and Westminster Review, volume XXXII, number II, London: […] C[harles] Reynell, […], →OCLC, pages 262 and 280:
        [page 262] The practice of "Lionism" originates in some feelings which are very good,—in veneration for intellectual superiority, and gratitude for intellectual gifts; and its form and prevalence are determined by the fact, that literature has reached a larger class, and interested a different order of people from any who formerly shared its advantages. A wise man might, at the time of the invention of printing, have foreseen the age of literary "Lionism," and would probably have smiled at it as a temporary extravagance. […] [page 280] A man so seriously devoted to an object is not likely to find himself the guest of the coarsest perpetrators of "lionism." He is not likely to accept hospitality on condition of being made a show. But if he should find himself for once placed on a footing with the asseverating gentleman—the immortal Nokes—in the print before us, he will not part with his good humour.
      • 1837 May, “Human Zoology.—No. II. Lions.”, in Theodore Hook, editor, The New Monthly Magazine and Humorist, volume L, 2nd part, number CXCVIII, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 177:
        To define what constitutes "a lion," would be about as easy a task as to describe the colours of a chamelion. The elements of lionism are of necessity evanescent, as they are various. Provided the thing be not common-place and familiar, there is scarcely a particular that will not constitute its owner a lion.
      • 1839 August, “The Lion of the Coteries”, in William Tait, Christian Isobel Johnstone, editors, Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume VI, number LXVIII, Edinburgh: William Tait; London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.; Dublin: John Cumming, →OCLC, page 495, column 1:
        An affray arose from Miss Florida getting into fits at seeing the body of a female infant dwarf, (the Palermo Fairy,) which Lady Garston had bribed the keeper of an anatomical museum to lend her for the night. Lady Merivale, disgusted by this bit of lionism, wished to be off, and looked round for Brandon to order her carriage.
      • 2009, Richard Salmon, “The Physiognomy of the Lion: Encountering Literary Celebrity in the Nineteenth Century”, in Tom Mole, editor, Romanticism and Celebrity Culture, 1750–1850, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, part I (Apparatus), page 60:
        While other contemporary cultural practices and technological developments, equally reflective of the same historical period, may have done more to shape the future condition of what we habitually describe as 'modern' celebrity, the phenomenon of lionism can be seen as uniquely representative of the heterogeneous, 'transitional' character of an earlier modernity.
      • 2013, Páraic Finnerty, “‘This is the Sort of Fame for which I have Given My Life’: G[eorge] F[rederic] Watts, Edward Lear and Portraits of Fame and Nonsense”, in Charlotte Boyce, Páraic Finnerty, Anne-Marie Millim, Victorian Celebrity Culture and Tennyson’s Circle, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, →DOI, →ISBN, page 56:
        His [Edward Lear's] dislike of the spectacle and practice of lionism, which were so prevalent in the social gatherings and salons of London, meant that he excluded himself from the very places where wider success, fame and fortune were arbitrated and produced.
      • 2016, John Plunkett, “Celebrity Culture”, in Juliet John, editor, The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, part III (Ways of Communicating: Print and Other Cultures), page 540:
        At the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign, the emergent nature of literary celebrity provoked much anxious debate due to the new phenomenon of ‘lionism’. Labelled after gazing at the lions in the Tower of London, lionism was the practice of having authors at salons and evening parties to be exhibited and shown off.
    2. The state of being the lion (see above) of 19th-century hosts.
      • 1847, [George Henry Lewes], “Expiation”, in Ranthorpe, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, book III (The Unsuccessful Author), page 118:
        In the whirl and giddiness of his lionism, he had contracted debts with the same recklessness as he had done every thing else. But his sense of honour was now galled when these debts were to be paid, and he found himself without money to pay them.
      • 1867 January 28 – March 8 (date written), Thomas Carlyle, “Appendix: Reminiscences of Sundry”, in James Anthony Froude, editor, Reminiscences, volume II, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1881, →OCLC, page 338:
        During the last seven or ten years of his life, [William] Wordsworth felt himself to be a recognised lion, in certain considerable London circles, […] Wordsworth took his bit of lionism very quietly, with a smile sardonic rather than triumphant, and certainly got no harm by it, if he got or expected little good.
      • 1909 May, Lionel Josaphare, “The Literary Lion”, in The Pacific Monthly: A Magazine of Education and Progress, volume XXI, number 5, Portland, Or.: The Pacific Monthly Company, →OCLC, page 458, column 2:
        As a matter of fact, the exemplar of lionism belongs to a Society for the Preservation of Egotism; any attack on the lion's traits would meet with peremptory slaughter. His friends surround him and attend to it that he is duly and steadfastly extolled.
      • 1995, Antonio Candido, “On Vengeance”, in Howard S[aul] Becker, transl., On Literature and Society, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 10:
        [A]ll of his [the Count of Monte Cristo's] Byronism, his "lionism," his use of hashish, his fame as a vampire, his infallibility (as if he were an initiate), his dominion over the heights and depths of society, converges toward an emotion and a dominant form of behavior to which he desires to attribute this providential character: vengeance.
  3. (by extension) The practice of lionizing (“treating a person as a celebrity or someone important”); also, the state of being lionized.
  4. (pathology) The state of a person having a leonine facies, that is, facial features which resemble those of a lion as a result of some disease, especially a form of leprosy which causes leontiasis (“a medical condition characterized by an overgrowth of the cranial and facial bones”).
  6. (Rastafari) The ideals of Rastafarianism.
    • 1980 December, Dennis Forsythe, “West Indian Culture through the Prism of Rastafarianism”, in R[alston] M[ilton] Nettleford, editor, Caribbean Quarterly: Rastafari, volume 26, number 4, Mona, Jamaica: Department of Extra-mural Studies, University of the West Indies, →ISSN, →JSTOR, →OCLC, pages 73 and 75:
      [page 73] Lionism transcends even Haile Selassie who merely came in the name of the Lion – as "The Conquering Lion of Judah" or as the "man-lion from Mount Zion." […] [page 75] Most Rastas attempt to become lions by attempting to syncretise and use all of these elements [Anancism, Judaic-Christianity, and African-Original Vibrations], as a means for their survival and progress. But some of these factors have ceased to be sources of strength – they have now become fetters and chains. […] Yet it is here, in this repressed sphere of African original roots vibrations, that the enduring foundations of true lionism is to be found. Ultimately, then, the return to Lionism means destroying or transcending major ingredients of our inherited selves – albeit our acquired (slave) selves.
    • 1999, William David Spencer, “The ‘Eastern’ Christ of Rastafari”, in Dread Jesus, Eugene, Or.: Wipf and Stock Publishers, published 1 April 2011, →ISBN, page 67:
      The remainder of [Dennis] Forsythe’s paper and the subsequent book that followed elaborated on implementing the characteristics of ‘lionism’ and achieving Rasta’s true ideal: […]
      The paper mentioned is the 1980 one above.
    • 2010, Delano Vincent Palmer, “The Story of RastafarI”, in Messianic ‘I’ and Rastafari in New Testament Dialogue: Bio-narratives, the Apocalypse, and Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Lanham, Md.; Plymouth, Devon: University Press of America, →ISBN, part I (Chronological Overview), page 21:
      Ten years after, [Leonard Percival] Howell purchased ‘Pinnacle estate in Sligoville, St. Catherine […] . . . the first free village established after “given emancipation” in 1938’ […]. It was at this site that ‘lionism’ and other fundamental RastafarI[sic] tenets were first developed.
Alternative forms
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Translations
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Etymology 2

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See Lionism.

Proper noun

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lionism

  1. (rare) Alternative letter-case form of Lionism (“the ideals of and membership in the Lions Club”)
    • 2000, Tell: The Weekly Newsmagazine, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria: Tell Communications, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 11:
      Sanusi says of his tenure as a Lions Club member: "I have always believed that lionism and clubs alike are anti-Islamic but this disposition, however, changed when I was lured into the club by a friend. And upon realising its objectives, I promise not to rest on my oars in making Lions Club the desire of all who want to render service to humanity."
    • 2005, Ola Vincent, Ola Vincent’s Speeches, Writings and Presentations: 1985–2004, Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria: Macmillan Nigeria, →ISBN, page 449:
      Thus lionism enshrined the doctrine of love, which binds humanity together.
    • 2016–2017, T. M. Gunaraja, P. N. Gopinathan, “Past District Governors”, in The International Association of Lions Clubs (Lions Clubs International) District 324-A1: Lions Handbook, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu: Signpost Celfon.In Technology, page 52:
      He [R. Ravichandran] joined lionism in 1985 in Lions Club of Madras Park Town.

References

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  1. ^ “lionism, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, July 2023.
  2. ^ “lionism, n.”, in Collins English Dictionary.

Further reading

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