Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The belief that improvement of society depends on human effort.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The improvement of society by regulated practical means: opposed to the passive principle of both pessimism and optimism.
- n. The doctrine that the world is neither the worst nor the best possible, but that it is capable of improvement: a mean between theoretical pessimism and optimism.
Wiktionary
- n. The view or doctrine that the world is neither entirely bad nor entirely good, and can be improved through human effort. Understood as an intermediate outlook, between optimism and pessimism.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The doctrine that there is a tendency throughout nature toward improvement.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the belief that the world can be made better by human effort
Etymologies
- Latin melior, better; see mel-2 in Indo-European roots + -ism.
Examples
“The term optimism as thus extended would also include "meliorism", a word first used in print by Sully to designate the theory of those who hold that things are, indeed, bad, but that they can be better, and that it is in our power to increase the happiness and welfare of mankind.”
“But given how messianic aspects of neoconservatism would subsequently become it's interesting to note that Kristol also (and in my view correctly) quipped that "meliorism" was all that could be hoped for even though: "Unsurprisingly, "coping" rather than "solving" lacks dramatic appeal for journalists as for politicians.”
John Terry’s sacking as England captain tells us something interesting...
“Those opponents of Fabianism who desire something more revolutionary than its political 'meliorism' and 'palliatives' accuse it of alliance with bureaucracy.”
“It is, however, fair to state that the term “meliorism,” coined by William James, describes far more accurately than “optimism” the view of the process philosophers mentioned.”
“The antonym to meliorism is apologism, which condemns attempts to alter earthly conditions; in this essay apologism stands for the idea that prolongevity is neither possible nor desirable.”
“Although Descartes differs from Bacon on method - ology, he holds similar views in favor of meliorism, including prolongevity.”
“What is not meaningful is incremental meliorism in the face of a coming catastrophe and against the opposition of a overwhelming oligarchic hegemony.”
“It is important to study the Weimar history, another time when centrists tried accomodation, comity, incrementalism, and meliorism enabled and abetted the murder of millions.”
Matthew Yglesias » The Real German Resistance to Hitler: The Social Democrats
“And it is just such meliorism that numbers among the many emotions Cleopatra feels when she talks about an “armour of gold” for Antony.”
“Apologism stands solidly in opposition to the metaphysics of meliorism, which states that absolute "progress" is the desirable goal of all human endeavors.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘meliorism’.
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nouns
enfleurage, fautor, mafia, haslet, chopine, sea-gate, cantillation, formicary, go-devil, Gongorism, mamzer, mazarine and 147 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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-ism's -logies
acosmism, absurdism, absolutism, ableism, aestheticism, alarmism, allotheism, anachronism, animalculism, analogism, animatism, animism and 464 more...
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-isms
fascism, anarchism, satanism, racism, racialism, nordicism, nazism, socialism, catholicism, national socialism, paganism, hinduism and 67 more...
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Vocabulary Workout
qroqqa pejorism Mar 18, 2009
nuxiy What is the opposite of meliorism? Mar 18, 2009