Definition of modernism
1 : a practice, usage, or expression peculiar to modern times such modernisms as “blog,” “bromance,” and “steampunk”
2 often capitalized : a tendency in theology to accommodate traditional religious teaching to contemporary thought and especially to devalue supernatural elements
3 : modern artistic or literary philosophy and practice; especially : a self-conscious break with the past and a search for new forms of expression extols the … modernism that laid the foundation of all twentieth-century design — Jeffrey Simpson
From the M-W Editors
Recent Examples of modernism from the Web
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The result is a kind of cozy modernism: clean, simple planes composed with evocative, handmade, and rustic materials.
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It is colored with folkloric Mexican music, jazz, sophisticated modernism, sensuous atmosphere and subtle musical quotations.
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Her singular paintings are among the most spellbinding and enduring in the history of art and the best, with Marsden Hartley’s, of early American modernism.
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Fischinger fled Hitler's Germany for the U.S. in 1936, when many artists and intellectuals — labeled as degenerates by the Nazi Party — fled amid the regime's crackdown on cultural modernism.
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But midcentury modernism remained a hard sell in Cleveland, and none of the Midwest's big innovators found clients in Cleveland, known until recent decades as a city that suffered from a kind of cultural time lag.
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Cleveland needs new downtown zoning to avoid repeating mistakes of midcentury modernism, such as the bleak streetscapes of the city's Erieview District, planned in the 1960s.
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Seeing human beings, or contemporary life, as machine-like is one of modernism’s earliest insights.
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Mr. Ligon has gathered diverse works of Western modernism along with African and American folk art, including artists such as Norman Lewis, Philip Guston, Andy Warhol, Joan Miró and Bill Traylor.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'modernism.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
First Known Use of modernism
1737
MODERNISM Defined for English Language Learners
modernism
playDefinition of modernism for English Language Learners
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: a style of art, architecture, literature, etc., that uses ideas and methods which are very different from those used in the past
Learn More about modernism
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See words that rhyme with modernism Spanish Central: Translation of modernism Nglish: Translation of modernism for Spanish speakers Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about modernism
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