rare. [mod. f. as prec. + -IST. (Farrar takes it from Ger. of Lersch.)] One who held that language was purely conventional or arbitrary in its origin, or without any natural analogy between names and the things named.
1860. Farrar, Orig. Lang., i. 7. Those who leaned to the conventional origin of language, were styled Anomalists. Ibid. (1865), Chapt. Lang., 109. The Analogists who argued for the natural origin of language against the Anomalists.
