Aestheticism
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A doctrine which holds aesthetics or beauty as the highest ideal or most basic standard. countable, uncountable
"He went over his canvases with disgust and anger, unable to see virtue in any one of them. Even his sacred Oyster Girl went back on him. The creature of a vitiated æstheticism, he could only suppose that conceit had played an abominable trick on his eyesight."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Both Decadence and Aestheticism, as intellectual movements, have fallen into the nadir of oblivion, and the dust lies heavy upon them, but they left a little leaven to lighten the heavy inertness of correct and academic literature; and now Symbolism, a greater movement than either, is in the ascendant, giving another turn to the wheel, and to all who think deeply about such matters it seems as though Symbolist literature is to be the literature of the future."
Etymology
From aesthetic + -ism.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.