An older or alternative form meaning excessive devotion to athletics or athletic pursuits.
A variant of athleticism using the suffix -ism directly on athlet-, this form is less common in modern English but appears in historical texts from the 19th-20th centuries.
The existence of both 'athleticism' and 'athletism' shows how English speakers have long debated whether to frame sports as a practice (athleticism) versus a belief system (athletism)—a distinction that mattered more in Victorian education.
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