realism
[ree-uh-liz-uh m]
- interest in or concern for the actual or real, as distinguished from the abstract, speculative, etc.
- the tendency to view or represent things as they really are.
- Fine Arts.
- treatment of forms, colors, space, etc., in such a manner as to emphasize their correspondence to actuality or to ordinary visual experience.Compare idealism(def 4), naturalism(def 2).
- (usually initial capital letter)a style of painting and sculpture developed about the mid-19th century in which figures and scenes are depicted as they are experienced or might be experienced in everyday life.
- Literature.
- a manner of treating subject matter that presents a careful description of everyday life, usually of the lower and middle classes.
- a theory of writing in which the ordinary, familiar, or mundane aspects of life are represented in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner that is presumed to reflect life as it actually is.Compare naturalism(def 1b).
- Philosophy.
- the doctrine that universals have a real objective existence.Compare conceptualism, nominalism.
- the doctrine that objects of sense perception have an existence independent of the act of perception.Compare idealism(def 5a).
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Origin of realism
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for realism
Contemporary Examples
There was also an off-putting conflict between whimsy and realism.
Interpreted more broadly, the phrase loses meaning: what constitutes the necessary threshold of realism?
He somehow manages to balance faith, realism, optimism, the news of the day, and the fate of the human race.
Yet American minimalism, isolationism, realism, mind-our-own-business-ism—whatever you want to call it—is cyclical.
I loved his blend of Native American realism with just a touch of surrealism.
Sherman Alexie on His New Film, the Redskins, and Why It's OK to Laugh at His WorkWilliam O’Connor
August 22, 2014
Historical Examples
Of plot there is little, but as a terrible study in realism the book is a masterpiece.
A Zola DictionaryJ. G. Patterson
The end of realism, my dear Wyndham, is the thing of all others I most desire to see.
Audrey CravenMay Sinclair
At some of the meetings there was perhaps an excess of realism.
Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of ScotlandDaniel Turner Holmes
To my thinking, at any rate, they make a gravid mistake who look for "realism" in these things.
HolbeinBeatrice Fortescue
Realism of the most ghastly truthfulness, as to a corpse in the grave, it certainly is.
HolbeinBeatrice Fortescue
realism
- awareness or acceptance of the physical universe, events, etc, as they are, as opposed to the abstract or ideal
- awareness or acceptance of the facts and necessities of life; a practical rather than a moral or dogmatic view of things
- a style of painting and sculpture that seeks to represent the familiar or typical in real life, rather than an idealized, formalized, or romantic interpretation of it
- any similar school or style in other arts, esp literature
- philosophy the thesis that general terms such as common nouns refer to entities that have a real existence separate from the individuals which fall under themSee also universal (def. 11b) Compare Platonism, nominalism, conceptualism, naive realism
- philosophy the theory that physical objects continue to exist whether they are perceived or notCompare idealism, phenomenalism
- logic philosophy the theory that the sense of a statement is given by a specification of its truth conditions, or that there is a reality independent of the speaker's conception of it that determines the truth or falsehood of every statement
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for realism
n.
1794, from real (adj.) + -ism; after French réalisme or German Realismus; from Late Latin realis "real." Opposed to idealism in philosophy, art, etc. In reference to scholastic doctrine of Thomas Aquinas (opposed to nominalism) it is recorded from 1826. Meaning "close resemblance to the scene" (in art, literature, etc., often with reference to unpleasant details) is attested from 1856.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
realism
An approach to philosophy that regards external objects as the most fundamentally real things, with perceptions or ideas as secondary. Realism is thus opposed to idealism. Materialism and naturalism are forms of realism. The term realism is also used to describe a movement in literature that attempts to portray life as it is.
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realism
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.