punctuationism

English

Etymology

From punctuation +‎ -ism.

Noun

punctuationism (uncountable)

1. (politics) In evolutionary biology, belief that evolution does not proceed at a steady pace, but instead is characterized by periods of stasis, punctuated by brief (within several hundred-thousand years) periods of rapid change.
   • 1986, Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker‎, W. W. Norton & Company, published 2015, →ISBN:

     Gould has misled himself by his own rhetorical emphasis on the purely poetic or literary resemblance between punctuationism, on the one hand, and true saltationism on the other.

See also

• gradualism
• saltationism

Anagrams

• mispunctuation