Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Social instability caused by erosion of standards and values.
- n. Alienation and purposelessness experienced by a person or a class as a result of a lack of standards, values, or ideals: "We must now brace ourselves for disquisitions on peer pressure, adolescent anomie and rage” ( Charles Krauthammer).
Wiktionary
- n. Alienation or social instability caused by erosion of standards and values.
WordNet 3.0
- n. personal state of isolation and anxiety resulting from a lack of social control and regulation
- n. lack of moral standards in a society
Etymologies
- From French anomie, from Ancient Greek ἀνομία (anomia, "lawlessness"), from ἄνομος (anomos, "lawless"), from ἀ- (a-, "not") + νόμος (nomos, "law") (Wiktionary)
- French, from Greek anomiā, lawlessness, from anomos, lawless : a-, without; see a-1 + nomos, law; see nem- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“But in sociology, we use the term anomie, the sense of normlessness that comes just like the spiraling down.”
“When it came to alienation, or what he preferred to call anomie, Durkheim was convinced that such shiftlessness—moral isolation, in effect—was caused by an absence of conventions and a rejection of the society that instituted them.”
“This unnatural, inorganic, materialistic way of living, coupled with a marked decline in society's moral and ethical standards -- what the French call anomie -- has created a kind of pathology that produces pain and emptiness, for which addictive behavior becomes the primary symptom and consumption the preferred drug of choice.”
“Leyburn points out that since the Scotch-Irish were never a "minority," in the sense that their values differed radically from the norms of their areas of settlement, they never suffered the normlessness which Durkheim calls anomie -- the absence of clear standards to follow.”
The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 A Study of Frontier Ethnography
“In his theory of suicide, he highlights the situation of "anomie" to refer to the circumstance of individuals whose relationship to the social whole is weak, and he explains differences in suicide rates across societies as the result of different levels of solidarity and its opposite, anomie.”
“If "anomie" exists in Greece today, it is found in the separation between law and democracy and the destruction of any sense of the common good.”
“What the minister, in his ignorance and desperation, called "anomie", political and legal theory examines under the term "civil disobedience".”
“Disobedience is a moral and civic response to governmental "anomie".”
“Cloward also influenced the concept of "anomie" (meaning social instability caused by erosion of standards and values; alienation and purposelessness experienced by a person or a class as a result of a lack of standards, values, or ideals).”
“If you google the term 'anomie' you will find a lot of jargon-laden articles whose purpose seems to be to make excuses for bad behavior or alcohol and drug abuse among certain populations, based on what happened to their ancestors several generations ago.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘anomie’.
-
WWF WTF?
Ever play "Words With Friends" with someone and they throw down some strange, unlikely group of letters that makes even the most mild and squeaky clean tongued person say "whiskey tango foxtrot"? ...
oorie, sangar, merl, cwm, doum, weir, jura, invar, lawine, tapa, waw, shog and 376 more...
-
Spring
famulus, congeries, pogonotrophy, rosarian, anomie, aiguillette, paseo, insouciant, gimcrack, atheling, chelonian
-
Rare Words - A
Not just rare words, but thousands of RARE WORDS WITH DEFINITIONS.
If you want to see the definitions, too, go to
http://phrontistery.i...aba, abacinate, abactor, abaculus, abaft, abampere, abapical, abarticular, abasement, abasia, abask, abatis and 1214 more...
-
Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
-
phrontistery - a
from phrontistery.info
aba, abacinate, abactor, abaculus, abaft, abampere, abasia, abask, abb, abba, abbatial, abra and 1214 more...
-
Scrabble
Beginning a list of useful & obscure Scrabble words ...
veinulet, titania, lactean, joual, anomie, edacious, axite, taxite, dace, oorie, gowany, moire and 5 more...
-
There's a word for that?
temerity, tacit, froward, faineant, caterwaul, menagerie, ennui, sine qua non, lissom, multifarious, laconic, katzenjammer and 240 more...
-
List Erine
cool mint antiseptic
shalom, cattywampus, bourgeoisie, aerophile, traverse, grotto, epicurean, ex cathedra, nautilus, epitaph, lathe, continuum and 753 more...
-
ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
-
The Collection
A somewhat discriminatory list of words and phrases collected for their euphonic or arcane appeal, interesting etymology, or concise definition of an otherwise unnamed phenomenon or concept.
ziggurat, neophilia, sucker punch, soporific, epoch, tundra, fiat, idiotproof, miscellany, metaphysics, cryptozoology, dysphoria and 850 more...
-
Encountered while reading
snatiation, urodynamics, cadaverine, putrescine, ferret emesis, dracula fish, psychedelic frogfish, mangkorn chomphoo, sengi, blonde-ginger bat, symplectic camel, zeolite and 312 more...
-
Thomas's Words
argus-eyed, chasmophile, extirpate, aperitif, outre, repartee, schadenfreude, insouciant, joie de vivre, callipygian, cavil, ad hominem and 147 more...
-
learning
A list of words whose meanings I am learning, either because a) I don't know the meaning b) I know the meaning, but could stand to better appreciate certain inflections or secondary meanings or c) ...
louche, educe, loam, cob, sclerotic, palliate, axial, syndicalist, ecumenical, sally, fatuous, parvenu and 1381 more...
-
Unbelonging
-
favorite words
sawbones, grackle, celadon, brio, loam, trull, mint, saliva, serape, frisson, impasto, reek and 547 more...
-
English
vorciferous, vituperative, vitriolic, vitiation, vitiated, virulent, venerate, vanguard, viands, unimpeachable, unctuous, unanimity and 398 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for anomie.
bashaba@mail.com ASVAB reffered to as a vaccum Mar 7, 2011
chained_bear "Now if there is one circumstance indisputably involved in the etiology of depression, it is precisely this sense of isolation or, to use the term adopted by Durkheim in his late-nineteenth-century study of suicide: anomie. Durkheim used it to explain the rising rates of suicide in nineteenth-century Europe; epidemiologists invoke it to help account for the increasing prevalence of depression in our own time."
—Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 140 Mar 13, 2009