Abderitism
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The theory that humanity's morality will never advance beyond its present state. uncountable
"This one example of Abderitism will suffice for my present purpose, though innumerable instances might be produced in other departments."
Example
More examples"This one example of Abderitism will suffice for my present purpose, though innumerable instances might be produced in other departments."
Etymology
From German Abderitismus, from Abderit (“foolish person”) + -ismus (“-ism”), from Ancient Greek Ἀβδηρῑ́της (Abdērī́tēs, “Abderite”) because of the Abderites’ famed foolishness and stupidity in classical Greece. It is equivalent to Abderite + -ism. The German term was coined by the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) in Der Streit der Fakultäten (The Conflict of the Faculties, 1798).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.