Westernism

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Something that is characteristic of the western part of a region.
  2. 2
    The ideology and culture of the West. uncountable
  3. 3
    An 19th-century intellectual ideology which saw Russia's development as dependent upon the adoption of Western European technology and liberal government. historical, uncountable

    "Slavophilism and Westernism were indeed the two sides of the same set of aspirations and sentiments, one facing an image of the past, and the other that of the future."

Example

More examples

"Slavophilism and Westernism were indeed the two sides of the same set of aspirations and sentiments, one facing an image of the past, and the other that of the future."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From western + -ism.

Etymology 2

From Western + -ism. The Russian ideology is a calque of Russian за́падничество (západničestvo).

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