Defeatism
noun
noun ·4 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 Acceptance of defeat without struggle. uncountable, usually
"Objective assessment is good, but defeatism will reduce our potentials even when the prospects for victory have never been nearer."
- 2 acceptance of the inevitability of defeat wordnet
Example
More examples"We risk tilting ourselves into a downward spiral of defeatism."
Etymology
From defeat + -ism, after French défaitisme, coined in 1915 by Russian writer Grigorij Aleksinskij as a translation of Russian пораже́нчество (poražénčestvo), also coined by him as a derivation of порази́ть (porazítʹ, “to strike, defeat”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.