noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The view or doctrine that the world can be improved through human effort (often understood as an intermediate outlook between optimism and pessimism). countable, uncountable

   "At the convention, the official mood was traditional Methodist meliorism."

2. 2
   the belief that the world can be made better by human effort wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

conversionextremismprogressivismradicalismreformreformation

Example

More examples

"At the convention, the official mood was traditional Methodist meliorism."

Etymology

From Latin melior (“better”) + -ism. Reportedly coined by British author George Eliot in her letters, published in 1877.

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