meliorism
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
- meliorist noun
- melioristic adjective
Etymology
Origin of meliorism
1855–60; < Latin melior better + -ism
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
When an intern tells a patient that he believes kindness is the best medicine, J.D. tersely interrupts his blue-sky meliorism with a cold splash of reality.
From Salon
He explained, “In the spirit of American meliorism, the criticism is to make things better, not necessarily because I didn’t like it.”
From New York Times
What if the real way forward weren’t a great leap but grinding, tedious, unglamorously incremental change—what George Eliot called “meliorism”?
From The New Yorker
The world-view of Judaism, which regards the entire economy of life as the realization of the all-encompassing plan of an all-wise Creator, is accordingly an energizing optimism, or, more precisely, meliorism.
From Project Gutenberg
In the midst of a futile meliorism which deceives the more, the more it soothes, he stands out like some sinister skeleton at the feast, regarding the festivities with a flickering and impenetrable grin.
From Project Gutenberg
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
