Atticism

noun6

1. •
   An expression or idiom characteristic of or peculiar to Attic Greek, especially an elegant and refined, if grammatically irregular, usage.
2. •
   A refined felicity or well-turned phrase, especially one deemed ungrammatical. (In Newcome, aposiopesis, dislocation, and inverse attraction, respectively.)
3. •
   The enduring rhetorical movement, begun in the 1st century B.C.E., whose members strove to emulate the style of the best Attic orators of that Classical period; especially in contrast with Asianism or Hellenism. (Its leading early proponent, Dionysius of Halicarnassus [c. 60–p. 7 B.C.E.], identified Lysias [c. 445–380 B.C.E.] as “the perfect model of the Attic dialect”, whose virtues he enumerates to be “purity of language, correct dialect, the presentation of ideas by means of standard, not figurative expressions; clarity, brevity, concision, terseness, vivid representation…, the pleasing arrangement of words after the manner of ordinary speech…, charm and a sense of timing which regulates everything else”.)
4. •
   (old-fashioned, historical) The stylistic principles of Greek Atticism in application to other languages, especially to Latin.
5. •
   The prestige dialect of Classical Greek, as spoken and written by the inhabitants of Attica (chiefly Athens) in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E.; Attic Greek.
6. •
   Attachment to, collaboration with, favouring of, or siding with Athens or Athenians, especially in the context of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.E.).

   • The same Summer, the Thebans demolished the walles of the Thespians, laying Atticisme to their charge. — 1628