Talk:autism

Emerging slangs
Have seen in the last couple years people using tism or 'tism as a shortform for this.
 * https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Tism 15 March 2017 "Short for autism" although 14 November 2004 has a broader "Any non-specific malady affecting one's ability to interact under the rules of normal social contract." which is more popular.
 * 20 December 2017 a comment "The hype is specific Bryan, I don't know what kind of tism would lead you to classify it otherwise." seems to support the "non-specific" interpretation.

Probably not established enough yet to keep track of, but worth revisiting later. Difficult to find examples due to Google not being case sensitive and returning a bunch of stuff on TISM instead. ScratchMarshall (talk) 03:53, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

RFV discussion: May–September 2018
Rfv-sense: "Outstanding stupidity"

Not in a OneLook reference. Can we find citations that unambiguously support this definition? DCDuring (talk) 12:27, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * AltHypeFan's block has expired. They should be around to defend this definition by now. Khemehekis (talk) 01:32, 2 June 2018 (UTC)


 * It is 4chan slang, basically a synonym of "obsessive pedantry/attention to detail" or "anal-retentiveness". I feel as though the other existing senses cover it. Equinox ◑ 20:39, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't know whether the other senses cover that usage or not (they may: it may be just hyperbolic reference to the real condition, like "this post gave me cancer/AIDS"), but this definition doesn't appear to. - -sche (discuss) 21:39, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 22:20, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

RFV discussion: July–August 2019
Rfv-sense: " An extreme amount of stupidity, nonsensicality or social ineptitude." - seems dubious to me. --Robbie SWE (talk) 19:07, 27 July 2019 (UTC)


 * You can just remove this. A "stupidity" sense already failed in the past; see Talk:autism. Equinox ◑ 20:44, 27 July 2019 (UTC)


 * it's a real albeit juvenile and to some people offensive sense, like how people used to call things "AIDS" or "cancer" that they thought were stupid. most juvenile terms are difficult to attest on wiktionary because they don't make it to durable media that often, but if someone tried hard enough (you'd have to look for adults quoting juveniles, probably) you could definitely attest this. --Habst (talk) 21:23, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

I speedied this, since it previously failed RFV, and was not given any citations when re-added. Kiwima (talk) 21:51, 27 July 2019 (UTC)


 * This was added by the same editor who added the sense “An incredibly stupid person” to downie and “A person who is substantially lacking in intelligence” to Downie. See also Requests for verification/Non-English. --Lambiam 08:05, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Check out this Lilium4320 edit at race realism, and then check out this AltHypeFan (the author who originally added that autism sense) edit at scientific racism. I suspect a sock puppet. Khemehekis (talk) 01:20, 30 July 2019 (UTC)


 * This sense does exist. It is like Habst said. Mihia (talk) 23:17, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Etymons used by Eugene Bleuler in coining
Recently, a editor using the IP address  the English entry to say that Eugene Bleuler coined the term from the German equivalent of  and added a reference to one of Bleuler's contemporary works translated into English where Bleuler makes a comparision between the term autoeroticism (as used by Sigmund Freud) and his own use of the term autism. Though not directly supporting the editor's assertion, it does make it seem that there is some sort of basis. Shortly after the IP editor made the change, Robbie SWE rolled it back to the previous etymology which stated Bleuler coined the equivalent German term from +. The reference listed for the etymology is Etymonline, which simply collects etymologies from other sources. Checking the Oxford English Dictionary, I find a slightly different etymology (they list the German suffix as the second part) with "E. Bleuler 1910, in  Psychiatrisch-Neurol. Wochenschr. 12 175/1" (which can be accessed here) as a source. Skimming the source and running sections through machine translation, I find Bleuler's comparison to Freud's terminology, but no specific description of how Bleuler decided on the term. Given all of this, how can we confidently state an etymology? Any responses would be greatly appreciated. Take care. &mdash;The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 21:48, 31 December 2021 (UTC)


 * For the record, the aforementioned changes and questions ended up being discussed at User talk:Robbie SWE . &mdash;The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 19:58, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Lexico says: [...] (originally with reference to a condition in which fantasy dominates over reality, regarded as a symptom of schizophrenia and other disorders): from Greek autos ‘self’+ -ism. Dictionary.com says: [...] 1910–15, for an earlier sense, and in 1940–45 for the current sense [...]; from German Autismus (in the earlier sense), from New Latin; aut- + -ism Merriam-Webster says only: see aut- Oxford Learners Dictionaries: [...] Greek autos ‘self’ + -ism. Collins: auto- + -ism In turn, regarding the German word, the Duden says: griechisch autós = selbst and the DWDS says: [...] griech[.] (αὐτός) ‘selbst’ C. Müller, Lexikon der Psychiatrie (2013), page 86, says: E. BLEULER knüpfte ausdrücklich an den Begriff „Autoerotismus“ an, den FREUD (1905) von H. ELLIS übernommen hatte: „Autismus ist ungefähr das gleiche, was FREUD Autoerotismus nennt.“ I.e., Bleuler seems to be saying that the phenomenon he calls "autism" is the same phenomenon as Freud called "autoerot(ic)ism", and perhaps he was "influenced by" the longer word in forming the short one, but the shorter modern word does not seem to originate as a contraction of the longer one. - -sche (discuss) 20:54, 3 January 2022 (UTC)


 * so, does this mean we should have a (psychiatry, dated) sense for autism meaning masturbation? or conversely, for autoeroticism meaning a psychiatric disorder that we later came to call autism? Compare self-stimulation which is  similarly almost always used in reference to non-sexual autistic stims today but still has a much older sense that was more common in the past (though I would expect the ratio of newer use to older use to be greater for the autism words, as not everyone is familiar with stims). — Soap — 21:36, 7 February 2024 (UTC)