Dystopia
//dɪsˈtəʊ.pi.ə// noun
noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A miserable, dysfunctional state or society that has a very poor standard of living or severe censorship, oppression, etc. countable, uncountable
"As novelist, he knows, too, that when he sees the future, it will not work—he will automatically be creating a “dystopia” (no one creates utopias any more: even the utopias of the past look like dystopias to us)."
- 2 a work of fiction describing an imaginary place where life is extremely bad because of deprivation or oppression or terror wordnet
- 3 Anatomical tissue that is not found in its usual place. countable, uncountable
"The patient suffers from adrenal dystopia."
- 4 state in which the conditions of life are extremely bad as from deprivation or oppression or terror wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"I was especially passionate about dystopia novels."
Etymology
From dys- + -topia, as if from Ancient Greek δυσ- (dus-, “bad”) + τόπος (tópos, “place, region”) + -ία (-ía), based on utopia being reinterpreted as eu-topia.
Related phrases
More for "dystopia"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.