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paradigm

/ˈpærədaɪm//ˈpærədaɪm/·noun
a typical model or pattern; a framework of ideas within which thinking happens
Fig. 1 — Ten dots circle an old centre inside its faint frame, the way they always have and always were meant to.
01Definition

A paradigm is the frame around a picture of the world: the set of assumptions, methods, and examples that a community treats as normal. In science, a paradigm tells researchers which questions are worth asking — until anomalies pile up and a 'paradigm shift' replaces the frame itself, a usage made famous by the historian of science Thomas Kuhn. More loosely, any dominant model can be a paradigm: remote work as a new paradigm of employment, for instance.

02In use
  • iEinstein's relativity forced physicists to abandon the Newtonian paradigm and its notion of absolute time.
  • iiStreaming did not just change music sales; it created an entirely new paradigm for the industry.
  • iiiHer research challenges the dominant paradigm in language learning, and the tidy analogy of the brain as a computer that underpins it.
03Collocations
  • a paradigm shift
  • the dominant paradigm
  • a new paradigm
  • challenge the paradigm

Family paradigmatic (adjective)

04Relations

=model, framework, pattern, archetype, worldview

≠anomaly, exception

06TOEFL & IELTS

TOEFL reading passages on the history of science lean heavily on 'paradigm' and 'paradigm shift', often testing whether you understand it as 'prevailing framework' rather than just 'example'. In IELTS essays, use it sparingly and precisely — 'a new paradigm' impresses only when the change you describe really is structural, not a minor trend.

07Asked
Why is the g in paradigm silent?
English kept the Greek spelling but simplified the final cluster: -gm at the end of a word drops the /ɡ/, as in phlegm and diaphragm. Say PAIR-uh-dime. The g is only sleeping, though: add a suffix and a syllable, and it wakes — paradigmatic is /ˌpærədɪɡˈmætɪk/, g fully pronounced, exactly as phlegm hides one in phlegmatic.
What exactly is a paradigm shift?
The term is Thomas Kuhn's, from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). His mechanism has three beats: anomalies accumulate that the reigning framework cannot digest; the field enters crisis; a new framework wins the community and redefines what counts as a sensible question. The scene above compresses it — the ignored outlier gathers defectors until every orbit swings around to circle it.
What did paradigm mean before Kuhn?
Something much humbler: Greek paradeigma, 'a pattern shown beside' — an example held up to copy. For centuries its home was the grammar classroom, where a paradigm was a conjugation table: amo, amas, amat is a paradigm of the Latin verb. Kuhn borrowed the little word for a very large job, and the old sense still lives on in linguistics.
Is a paradigm the same as a model?
A model is something you build inside a framework; a paradigm is the framework — the assumptions that decide which models are worth building. The brain-as-computer analogy is a model; cognitive science's commitment to computation is closer to a paradigm. Framework is the nearest everyday synonym, but paradigm adds the sense of a whole community's unquestioned defaults.
What is a real example of a paradigm?
Astronomy's switch from an Earth-centred to a Sun-centred cosmos is the textbook case: the same sky, reorganized around a different centre. Medicine's move from miasma — disease as 'bad air' — to germ theory is another: suddenly hygiene, not odour, was the question. Note the pattern: a paradigm change redefines what practitioners look at, not just what they conclude.