as in liberal
a person with very modern ideas
a time when Paris was the center of the universe for modernists in the art world
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as in modern
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Recent Examples of modernist
Lee Sharrock, Forbes.com, 15 Sep. 2025
His restaurant sits in the courtyard of the Hotel Saint Augustine, an airy, modernist space brimming with sagebrush.
—The Bon Appétit Staff, Bon Appetit Magazine, 12 Sep. 2025
This was a departure from Pärt’s earlier modernist and experimental music, and expressed a yearslong struggle to reconcile his newfound commitment to Orthodox Christianity and his rigorous artistic ideals.
—Jeffers Engelhardt, The Conversation, 10 Sep. 2025
Suddenly panicked, Maria turns the car around and heads back to her boxy, modernist house with Danny and locks him in her basement.
—Leslie Felperin, HollywoodReporter, 7 Sep. 2025
In terms of design, the EliteBook Ultra G1i has the same sleek, modernist chassis as the Qualcomm Snapdragon version launched last year.
—PC Magazine, 7 Sep. 2025
Rossellini’s film is part of a distinctive canon of modernist melodramas that self-consciously acknowledge the tension of those oppositions and foreground their symbolic disruption of realistic conventions.
—Richard Brody, New Yorker, 4 Sep. 2025
The apparently simple farmhouse masks a far more complex—and modernist—interior world.
—Joseph Giovannini, Architectural Digest, 4 Sep. 2025
Joseph Eichler was a visionary real estate developer of the mid-20th century who revolutionized suburban housing by building over 11,000 affordable — yet architecturally distinctive —modernist homes across California.
—David Caraccio, Sacbee.com, 2 Sep. 2025
Jane Hanson, Forbes.com, 14 Sep. 2025
White Out is like something from the high-modernist era of Joyce and Woolf—dark, fragmented, impressionistic, saturated with irony and black humor.
—Scott Stossel, The Atlantic, 9 Sep. 2025
Only his near contemporary, the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens (who survived into old age), who weirdly enough also was a lawyer for an insurance company, rivals Kafka in terms of the inverse proportion of literary originality and canonical significance to dullness of life story.
—Leslie Felperin, HollywoodReporter, 8 Sep. 2025
The eighth annual World Championship in Massage was under way in a modernist, glass-and-concrete building owned by University College Copenhagen.
—Sarah Larson, New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2025
The still-unfinished Sagrada Família inspires awe with its Gothic-meets-modernist majesty—and enduring century-long construction timeline.
—AFAR Media, 3 Sep. 2025
Where Larsen explored modernist ambiguity and Hurston embraced folkloric Black expression, Fauset wrote in a more traditional style that some critics dismissed as too proper or assimilationist.
—Glory Edim
august 27, Literary Hub, 27 Aug. 2025
If mid-century or Italian modernist pieces aren’t your style, 2Modern’s vast inventory also includes more traditional office furniture.
—Kate McGregor, Architectural Digest, 27 Aug. 2025
The editing speeds up as the sequence draws to a close, paced by a score by the modernist composer and author Paul Bowles, whom Latouche recruited to the project.
—Big Think, 26 Aug. 2025
Noun
One season might pair Dutch Golden Age civic ideals with O’Keeffe’s modernist experimentation and Sarah Sze’s meditations on time and abstraction.
—Lee Sharrock, Forbes.com, 15 Sep. 2025
His restaurant sits in the courtyard of the Hotel Saint Augustine, an airy, modernist space brimming with sagebrush.
—The Bon Appétit Staff, Bon Appetit Magazine, 12 Sep. 2025
This was a departure from Pärt’s earlier modernist and experimental music, and expressed a yearslong struggle to reconcile his newfound commitment to Orthodox Christianity and his rigorous artistic ideals.
—Jeffers Engelhardt, The Conversation, 10 Sep. 2025
Suddenly panicked, Maria turns the car around and heads back to her boxy, modernist house with Danny and locks him in her basement.
—Leslie Felperin, HollywoodReporter, 7 Sep. 2025
In terms of design, the EliteBook Ultra G1i has the same sleek, modernist chassis as the Qualcomm Snapdragon version launched last year.
—PC Magazine, 7 Sep. 2025
Rossellini’s film is part of a distinctive canon of modernist melodramas that self-consciously acknowledge the tension of those oppositions and foreground their symbolic disruption of realistic conventions.
—Richard Brody, New Yorker, 4 Sep. 2025
The apparently simple farmhouse masks a far more complex—and modernist—interior world.
—Joseph Giovannini, Architectural Digest, 4 Sep. 2025
Joseph Eichler was a visionary real estate developer of the mid-20th century who revolutionized suburban housing by building over 11,000 affordable — yet architecturally distinctive —modernist homes across California.
—David Caraccio, Sacbee.com, 2 Sep. 2025
Adjective
Marc Jacobs’s Greenwich Village townhouse, Bjarke Ingels’s houseboat, and Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz’s modernist home all appear in the collection.
—Jane Hanson, Forbes.com, 14 Sep. 2025
White Out is like something from the high-modernist era of Joyce and Woolf—dark, fragmented, impressionistic, saturated with irony and black humor.
—Scott Stossel, The Atlantic, 9 Sep. 2025
Only his near contemporary, the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens (who survived into old age), who weirdly enough also was a lawyer for an insurance company, rivals Kafka in terms of the inverse proportion of literary originality and canonical significance to dullness of life story.
—Leslie Felperin, HollywoodReporter, 8 Sep. 2025
The eighth annual World Championship in Massage was under way in a modernist, glass-and-concrete building owned by University College Copenhagen.
—Sarah Larson, New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2025
The still-unfinished Sagrada Família inspires awe with its Gothic-meets-modernist majesty—and enduring century-long construction timeline.
—AFAR Media, 3 Sep. 2025
Where Larsen explored modernist ambiguity and Hurston embraced folkloric Black expression, Fauset wrote in a more traditional style that some critics dismissed as too proper or assimilationist.
—Glory Edim
august 27, Literary Hub, 27 Aug. 2025
If mid-century or Italian modernist pieces aren’t your style, 2Modern’s vast inventory also includes more traditional office furniture.
—Kate McGregor, Architectural Digest, 27 Aug. 2025
The editing speeds up as the sequence draws to a close, paced by a score by the modernist composer and author Paul Bowles, whom Latouche recruited to the project.
—Big Think, 26 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for modernist
Noun
-
Consider that in the United States, a liberal is someone who stands on the political left, probably voted for Joe Biden, and may subscribe to some lite socialism (another Humpty Dumpty term, but one at a time).—
Big Think,
Big Think,
11 Sep. 2025
-
Wu, an unabashed liberal, now could be following those legendary mayors with a resounding win against Kraft.—
Joe Battenfeld,
Boston Herald,
6 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
Information operations and psychological warfare are a key component of modern war — and arguably nowhere is this truer than in the Israel-Islamist conflict.—
Sean Durns,
The Washington Examiner,
12 Sep. 2025
-
Watch a modern student tackle an assignment.—
Cornelia C. Walther,
Forbes.com,
12 Sep. 2025
Noun
-
Further east, the Russian revolutionaries of 1917 adopted a utopian faith in material progress and science.—
Sonja Fritzsche,
The Conversation,
9 Sep. 2025
-
The movie follows DiCaprio as a former political revolutionary named Bob Ferguson who goes on the run when a military leader named Steven Lockjaw (Penn) renews his search for Ferguson and his family.—
Tommy McArdle,
PEOPLE,
9 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
Maybe anyone busting on a contemporary Knute Rockne on live television would always hit.—
Pete Sampson,
New York Times,
10 Sep. 2025
-
While its heritage remains intact, contemporary dining, wellness, and a growing emphasis on sustainability signal how even a grand dame can move with the times.—
Lauren Mowery,
Forbes.com,
10 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
Others suggested the 50-foot steel sculpture was a bird, a horse, a Viking ship, a baboon or a modernistic representation of Picasso’s dog.—
Kori Rumore,
Chicago Tribune,
15 Aug. 2025
Adjective
-
Inspired by a pile of cardboard and constructed using the same material, Frank Gehry’s luxe Wiggle chair functions as the perfect compact statement piece that will slot right in next to a library bookshelf or stand on its on in an ultramodern space.—
Kate McGregor,
Architectural Digest,
2 Sep. 2025
-
Cecilie Bahnsen’s Asics Mary Jane is ultramodern and childlike all at once, not dissimilar from the Danish designer’s line of romantic, frilly, and poofy, voluminous clothing.—
Hannah Dylan Pasternak,
SELF,
11 Aug. 2025
Adjective
-
The epic tale, which took place across past and present-day storylines, was told through several movies and a TV series that aired for six seasons in the '90s.—
Raechal Shewfelt,
Entertainment Weekly,
12 Sep. 2025
-
Nevertheless, while Raskin's ideas may have few present-day implementations, that doesn't mean the spirit in which they were proposed is dead, too.—
Cameron Kaiser,
ArsTechnica,
12 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
Arafat’s successor, current PA President Mahmoud Abbas, has banished and imprisoned opponents and critics.—
Sean Durns,
The Washington Examiner,
12 Sep. 2025
-
The current Razorback defenders are well aware of the shortcomings in last year’s game.—
Tom Murphy,
Arkansas Online,
12 Sep. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Modernist.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/modernist. Accessed 17 Sep. 2025.
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