Nihilism

Quick meaning: Nihilism is a noun meaning (usually uncountable) The view that all endeavours are devoid of objective meaning.

Meaning

(usually uncountable) The view that all endeavours are devoid of objective meaning.

More Meanings

1. (usually uncountable, politics) The rejection of non-proven or non-rationalized assertions in the social and political spheres of society.
2. (uncountable, psychiatry) A delusion that oneself or the world, or parts thereof, have ceased to exist.
3. (countable) Something that is regarded as meaningless.
4. (usually uncountable) The rejection of, or opposition to, religious beliefs, (inherent or objective) moral principles, legal rules, etc., often due to the view that life is meaningless (sense 1).
5. (uncountable, Russia, politics, historical) Alternative letter-case form of Nihilism (“a Russian movement of the 1860s that rejected all authority and promoted the use of violence for political change”).
6. (countable, uncountable, philosophy) A doctrine grounded on the negation of one or more meaningful aspects of life; in particular, the view that nothing in the world actually exists.

Example Sentences

[T]he band members sweat hard enough to earn their pretensions, and maybe even their nihilism.

[T]he dire portent of Nihilism, which some persons regard as little more than an extreme protest against absolutism in Government, [...] is an execrable conspiracy against all religion and morality.

Most Christians cannot embrace such radical extremes as the current nihilisms that deny all spiritual and ethical truth. How can a Christian look to Jesus Christ and deny that there is truth? He is the truth.

But there was also about him an indescribable air which no mechanic could have acquired in the practice of his handicraft however dishonestly exercised: [...] the air of moral nihilism common to keepers of gambling hells and disorderly houses; [...]

Word Forms

• nihilisms

Antonyms for nihilism

Common opposites include antinihilism.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include anarchy, nihil, nihilhood, nihilator, nothingness, unmeaning.

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