philistine
noun
a person who is lacking in or hostile or smugly indifferent to cultural values, intellectual pursuits, aesthetic refinement, etc., or is contentedly commonplace in ideas and tastes.
Philistinism
-
a word derived from
Philistine.
philistinism
-
a word derived from
philistine.
philistinenouna person who is lacking in or hostile or smugly indifferent to cultural values, intellectual pursuits, aesthetic refinement, etc., or is contentedly commonplace in ideas and tastes.
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.
See Examples For:
That’s an assumption rooted in familiar and endlessly fractious debates between art and commerce; elitism and Philistinism; an eclectic, connoisseurial sensibility and an incurious, consumerist one.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 5, 2021
In an essay promoting his idea, Smith quoted a British critic who damned America as “the apotheosis of Philistinism; where the people are drunk with materialism, and wealth is a curse instead of a blessing.”
From Washington Post ● Apr. 3, 2021
I assume he doesn’t mean it this way, but this reads like a passionate defense of Philistinism.
From Salon ● Feb. 16, 2013
Philistinism," he realized, "had acquired a new content, a new set of conditioned reflexes.
From Time Magazine Archive
Even what is most unnatural is Nature; even the coarsest Philistinism has something of her genius.
From Maxims and Reflections by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Call it inverse philistinism: the use of intentionally bad imagery, perhaps with a wink, to create an “us-them” dynamic.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 17, 2022
Not that I think the movies are dying, any more than they have been dying for the past 90 years or so, as they were fatally menaced by sound, television, corporate greed and audience philistinism.
From New York Times ● Dec. 6, 2022
Swed pays tribute to a writer “who attacked philistinism without fear wherever he saw it.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 5, 2019
The best works produced under Company patronage are unparalleled in Indian art and show a sympathy with the Mughal world quite at odds with prevailing stereotypes of colonial philistinism and insensitivity.
From BBC ● Sep. 19, 2015
Women of narrow hearts often remain unyielding through a certain philistinism of virtue.
From Without Dogma by Henryk Sienkiewicz
