Declinism

//dɪˈklaɪnɪzəm// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A pessimistic belief that things are in decline. uncountable

    "Scholars point out that strains of declinism can be found in most eras of history, which raises the question, is it logically possible for the world to be going to hell interminably — to be endlessly on its way to hell, ever worse than before, and ever better at each earlier epoch?"

Example

More examples

"Scholars point out that strains of declinism can be found in most eras of history, which raises the question, is it logically possible for the world to be going to hell interminably — to be endlessly on its way to hell, ever worse than before, and ever better at each earlier epoch?"

Etymology

From decline + -ism.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.