Realism

How to spell realism

7 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce realism

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does realism mean?

1. nounA clear-eyed acceptance of a situation as it actually is, rather than an idealised version of it.
2. nounA style in art or literature that depicts subjects truthfully and without idealisation.
3. nounThe doctrine that objects or abstract concepts exist independently of our perception of them.

Realism in a sentence

• A dose of realism helped the team set a budget they could actually meet.

• The gritty realism of the film made the prison scenes hard to watch.

• The lecture contrasted realism with idealism, which denies a mind-independent world.

• Her financial realism kept the family from overspending on the holiday.

• Nineteenth-century realism favoured ordinary working people over heroic myths.

• Scientific realism holds that unobserved particles still genuinely exist.

Where does realism come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word is built on 'real', which entered English in the 1400s from Late Latin realis, meaning 'relating to things' or 'actual', itself formed on the Latin noun res, meaning 'thing' or 'matter'. To this familiar base English added the suffix -ism, borrowed through French and ultimately from the Greek -ismos, which forms nouns naming a doctrine, attitude, or organised movement. 'Realism' itself appears in English from the early 1800s, first in philosophy and then quickly spreading into discussion of art and literature, where it named the deliberate depiction of life as it actually is rather than as idealised or romanticised. The everyday sense, a practical and clear-eyed acceptance of how things really are, grew naturally out of this same idea. Because the spelling simply stacks the ordinary word 'real' onto a common suffix, the main thing to remember is that the 'e' before the 'a' stays put: real plus ism, with no letters lost.

How the word is built

• real (from Latin realis: relating to things, actual)
• -ism (noun suffix: doctrine, attitude, or movement)