prescriptivistn.adj.

1952 T. Pyles Words & Ways Amer. Eng. xi. 272 He is likely not to see any reason why absolute uniformity, the desideratum of the prescriptivist, should be any particular concern of the student of language even if it were possible of attainment.

1960 J. O. Urmson Conc. Encycl. Western Philos. 143 To call a thing good is thereby to offer guidance about choices; and the same might be said of the other moral terms. Descriptivists, however, refuse to admit that this feature is part of the meaning of moral terms. Their principal opponents, who may be called ‘prescriptivists’, hold that it is part of the meaning.

1970 D. F. Thompson in H. S. Kariel Frontiers Democratic Theory 406 While prescriptivists would construe democratic theory as expressing standards that are unaffected by behavioral evidence, descriptivists would go to the other extreme.

1994 J. Edwards Multilingualism (1995) vi. 147 Quintilian held that only ‘correct’ usage and ‘moral’ behaviour should be taken as guides to proper language; he was, after all, a prescriptivist.

1954 College Eng. 15 396/1 Two of the three objectionable forms..are older than the prescriptivist objection to them.

1959 Aristotelian Soc. Suppl. Vol. 33 167 It seems to me that only prescriptivist prejudice can deny that we have here a morality.

1973 Heythrop Jrnl. 14 139 His normative views are no more arbitrary or relativist than those of any utilitarian, despite his non-naturalist and prescriptivist theory of meta-ethics.

1977 Publ. Amer. Dial. Soc. 1974 lxi/ lxii. 8 The English teacher who..is suddenly bereft of her prescriptivist techniques and her substitution drills.

1994 Internat. Jrnl. Lexicogr. 7 291 Should a dictionary enter a racially or ethnically offensive word? The easy prescriptivist answer is no—the honest descriptivist one is yes.