hygienic

In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.

Meaning · English

Whose expansion is guaranteed not to cause the accidental capture of identifiers.

Register: slang

Where it’s used: Used American English

Examples

Of course, anyone with a Scheme background is probably howling at this point because they have a hygienic macro system that makes unintended variable capture impossible. Allowing variable capture when we really, really want it makes Clojure's macro system technically more dangerous than hygienic sys

Usage example from English Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Adapted from English Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30 via kaikki.org).

Common questions

What does “hygienic” mean?

Whose expansion is guaranteed not to cause the accidental capture of identifiers.

Is “hygienic” formal or informal?

hygienic is generally slang.