Symbolist
adj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 One who employs symbols.
- 2 a member of an artistic movement that expressed ideas indirectly via symbols wordnet
- 3 A symbolist poet or artist.
"The symbolists had not all an explicit philosophy; but they were all aware of potencies in the world or in themselves which language cannot articulately express, and which are yet more vitally real than the 'facts' which we can grasp and handle, and the 'respectable' people whom we can measure and reckon with."
- 4 someone skilled in the interpretation or representation of symbols wordnet
- 5 A proponent of symbolic artificial intelligence.
"At the helm of the symbolists was [Frank] Rosenblatt’s nemesis, MIT professor Marvin Minsky."
- 1 Of or pertaining to the Symbolist movement in late 19th-century and early 20th-century European arts and literature not-comparable
"The general picture that has emerged is one of Cubism bubbling up out of a thick Parisian stew of symbolist poetry, Cézanne, cafe society, African masks, absinthe and a fascination with all things mechanical and modern, mostly airplanes and automatons."
Example
More examples"Both Decadence and Aestheticism, as intellectual movements, have fallen into the nadir of oblivion, and the dust lies heavy upon them, but they left a little leaven to lighten the heavy inertness of correct and academic literature; and now Symbolism, a greater movement than either, is in the ascendant, giving another turn to the wheel, and to all who think deeply about such matters it seems as though Symbolist literature is to be the literature of the future."
Etymology
From French symboliste, coined by French poet Paul Verlaine in 1885.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.