Dystopian

How to spell dystopian

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce dystopian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dystopian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to an imagined society that is frighteningly bad, oppressive, or degraded, often in the future.

Dystopian in a sentence

• The novel paints a dystopian future ruled by surveillance and fear.

• Critics praised the film for its bleak, dystopian vision of the city.

Where does dystopian come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is the adjective form of 'dystopia', a deliberately constructed opposite to 'utopia'. Utopia was coined in 1516 by Thomas More from the Greek ou, meaning 'not', and topos, meaning 'place', so it literally named a 'no-place', an ideal society that exists nowhere. To describe the reverse, a wretched or oppressive imagined society, writers swapped in the Greek prefix dys-, meaning 'bad', 'ill', or 'faulty', the same element found in 'dysfunction' and 'dyslexia'. The noun 'dystopia' is recorded from the nineteenth century, and 'dystopian' followed as its adjective, becoming especially common in the twentieth century thanks to bleak novels of the future. The hidden trap in spelling lies in remembering the buried topos root: the second syllable is 'top', and the ending is -ian, not -ion.

How the word is built

• dys- (bad, faulty)
• top (place, from Greek topos)
• -ian (adjective suffix)