Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The tendency to oversimplify an issue or a problem by ignoring complexities or complications.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The advocacy or cultivation of simplieity; hence, an affected or labored simplicity.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The trait of oversimplifying things by ignoring complexity and complications.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an act of excessive simplification; the act of making something seem simpler than it really is
  • noun a simplification that goes too far (to the point of misrepresentation)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French simplisme, from simple, simple, from Old French; see simple.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

simple +‎ -ism.

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Examples

  • By non-fundamentalist, I mean he opposes "simplism" or simple minded thinking.

    Archive 2008-05-01 WENDEE HOLTCAMP 2008

  • By non-fundamentalist, I mean he opposes "simplism" or simple minded thinking.

    what does it mean? WENDEE HOLTCAMP 2008

  • The economic situation is very much like that, and the ranting you hear about how it's going has major components grounded in simplism.

    Talking Our Way Out of the Great Recession 2009

  • Perhaps its because rather than insight and thoughtfulness, Greenwald and his black-and-white philosophical simplism comforts those who are too lazy or too insecure to do the heavy-lifting it would require to wrap their minds around complex issues, most of which resist being corraled into highly partisan explanations.

    The "Stupid" Dialogue. Ann Althouse 2006

  • Despite his descent into simplism and banality in his later work, this poem shows the brilliant talent he possessed as a young poet.

    Archive 2006-10-01 Rus Bowden 2006

  • Union would be historical simplism, because no man by himself could have created certain conditions.

    Castro Interviewed on Soviet Collapse, Stalin 1992

  • Blaming him for everything that happened would be historical simplism.

    Castro Interviewed on Soviet Collapse, Stalin 1992

  • Your analysis falls into the typical simplism of those who dont understand the complexity of our HCS and tends to be trivialize it in a simple argument of Amricans being backward and caring more for their money than their country's health and so on.

    The Guardian World News 2010

  • A good teacher is a master of simplification and an enemy of simplism.

    DB's Medical Rants 2008

  • The issue of Clark’s supposed flip-flop on the war is as Josh Marshall says part of the media’s apparent embrace of “simplism as the new integrity.”

    Hullabaloo 2003

Comments

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  • A fellow by name of Abe Chisolm

    Could jive to the Trumpian rhythm,

    And the pleasure he got

    Was better than thought.

    It's sweeter to swing to simplism.

    March 30, 2017