Other Words from meliorism

meliorist \ ˈmēl-yə-rist

, ˈmē-lē-ə- \ adjective or noun

melioristic \ ˌmēl-yə-ˈri-stik

, ˌmē-lē-ə- \ adjective

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In 1877, British novelist George Eliot believed she had coined meliorist when she wrote, "I don't know that I ever heard anybody use the word 'meliorist' except myself." Her contemporaries credited her with coining both meliorist and meliorism, and one of her letters contains an early documented use of meliorism; however, there is evidence that meliorist had been around decades before she started using it. Whoever coined it did so by drawing on the Latin melior, meaning "better." It is likely that the English coinages were also influenced by another melior descendant, meliorate, a synonym of ameliorate ("to make better or more tolerable") that was introduced to English in the 1500s.

Examples of meliorism in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Goodhart reckons the positional nature of status — man’s envy plays a part in this puzzle, mind you — and the kind of economic meliorism that the center-left of his formative years applies to income inequality may fail to do the trick this time. — Jorge González-gallarza Hernández, National Review, 6 Dec. 2020 To its critics, this modesty and meliorism represent cowardice. — Rosa Inocencio Smith, The Atlantic, 10 Aug. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'meliorism.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.