the Enlightenment
noun
: a movement of the 18th century that stressed the belief that science and logic give people more knowledge and understanding than tradition and religion
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While not quite Mary Shelly, Percy Shelly, Lord Bryon and the poet born George Gordon’s physician John Polidori in 1816 in a villa near Lake Geneva inventing Frankenstein and The Vampyre on the heels of the Enlightenment, Mountainhead is pretty scary.
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Dominic Patten, Deadline, 23 May 2025
American internationalism has to start with the reality of a country founded on enslavement and the Enlightenment.
—Charles King, Foreign Affairs, 18 June 2021
Passions, for those men of the Enlightenment, fought against reason.
—Megan Garber, The Atlantic, 29 Apr. 2025
Saul posited that technocratic elites had fetishized the Enlightenment ideal of rationality to the point of extremism.
—Jennifer Szalai, New York Times, 9 Apr. 2025
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Dominic Patten, Deadline, 23 May 2025
American internationalism has to start with the reality of a country founded on enslavement and the Enlightenment.
—Charles King, Foreign Affairs, 18 June 2021
Passions, for those men of the Enlightenment, fought against reason.
—Megan Garber, The Atlantic, 29 Apr. 2025
Saul posited that technocratic elites had fetishized the Enlightenment ideal of rationality to the point of extremism.
—Jennifer Szalai, New York Times, 9 Apr. 2025
See All Example Sentences for the Enlightenment
Cite this Entry
“The Enlightenment.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20Enlightenment. Accessed 1 Jul. 2025.
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