Declinist
adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A subscriber to declinism.
"Rather than accept this, declinists often explained things that did not happen, with explanations that did not work, based on bad history. Thus declinists insist that British R&D has always been low, the City always over-mighty, the country always in the grip of empire, the state under the imaginative control of classicists and historians rather than technocrats, that industry never stood a chance."
- 1 Believing in or tending towards declinism.
"Against a background of almost paralytic gloom and declinist talk, Vienna tried to take on Napoleon, breifly bhecked him at Aspern-Essling and then went down to absolute defeat at Wagram […]."
Example
More examples"Rather than accept this, declinists often explained things that did not happen, with explanations that did not work, based on bad history. Thus declinists insist that British R&D has always been low, the City always over-mighty, the country always in the grip of empire, the state under the imaginative control of classicists and historians rather than technocrats, that industry never stood a chance."
Etymology
From decline + -ist.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.