patternistn.adj.

1873 Amer. Naturalist 7 28 The advantages of such tables.., appear to me to be equally obvious..whether we are evolutionists or patternists.

1936 in Mind 46 (1937) 253 Since the patternist treats facts (as technically defined) as basic..he would at once reply that he never knows whether two objects ‘really’ coincide.

1957 Sc. Jrnl. Theol. 10 95 Since Professor Hooke edited Myth and Ritual, he has often been unjustly held responsible for all the vagaries of the wildest of the patternists.

1992 Independent (Nexis) 18 June 28 Eric von Plack is a behavioural patternist. He studies patterns of behaviour.

1951 H. Frankfort Probl. of Similarity in Anc. Near Eastern Relig. 10 Those..‘patternist’ authors who declare that a myth is merely the spoken accompaniment of ritual.

1957 Sc. Jrnl. Theol. 10 95 Not all will agree with Dr Hooke's patternist explanation of Elijah on Carmel and away to Horeb.

1973 Econ. Geogr. 49 264/2 As with the patternist view of explanation, it also consists of the use of the heuristic and analogical properties of models.

1997 Applied Econ. (Nexis) 29 903 One useful approach has been the development and testing of a ‘patternist’ explanation of consumer purchases.