Idealism

How to spell idealism

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce idealism

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does idealism mean?

1. nounThe practice of forming or pursuing high principles and noble goals, often without full regard for practicality.
2. nounThe philosophical doctrine that reality is fundamentally mental or shaped by ideas rather than existing independently of the mind.

Idealism in a sentence

• The young lawyer's idealism led her to take on cases that paid almost nothing.

• The lecture contrasted idealism with materialism in eighteenth-century thought.

• Years in the corporate world had not dimmed his idealism about fair pay.

• Her thesis examined the German idealism of Kant and Hegel.

Where does idealism come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek idea, meaning a 'form', 'pattern', or 'appearance', which itself grew from the verb idein, 'to see'. Through Latin idea and Old French, this gave English the word 'idea', and from there the adjective 'ideal', describing something that exists as a perfect model or standard rather than in flawed reality. Adding the suffix -ism, which marks a system of belief or a habitual practice, produced 'idealism' in the eighteenth century. It first carried a philosophical sense, the view that the mind or ideas are the true basis of reality, and only later took on the everyday meaning of striving toward high principles. The spelling keeps the full 'ideal' intact, so the trap is simply remembering the unstressed schwa in the middle, '-al-', before the '-ism' ending.

How the word is built

• ideal (from Greek idea: form, pattern)
• -ism (noun suffix denoting a doctrine or practice)