This chapter offers a brief survey of general and narrow senses of “nominalism” in historical writing. It argues that nominalism should be strictly understood as a subcategory within the larger context of a style of argument best characterized as “terminism,” an approach that dominated the Liberal Arts in late medieval schools. It explains why terminism was more inclusive of a variety of doctrines than nominalism in its proper sense. It concludes by considering early reactions to Ockham.