modernism

UK: /ˈmɒdəˌnɪzəm/ US: /ˈmɑdɚˌnɪzəm/ ,(mod′ər niz′əm)

WordReference Random House Learner's Dictionary of American English © 2025

mod•ern•ism /ˈmɑdɚˌnɪzəm/   n. [uncountable]

1. modern character, tendencies, or values;
   belief in or sympathy with what is modern.
2. Music and Dance, Literature, Fine Art [sometimes: Modernism] a movement in the arts and literature rejecting the past.

mod•ern•ist, n. [countable] , adj. 
mod•ern•is•tic, adj.: 

modernistic sculpture.

See -mod-.

WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2025

mod•ern•ism  (mod′ər niz′əm), n. 

1. modern character, tendencies, or values;
   adherence to or sympathy with what is modern.
2. a modern usage or characteristic.
3. Religion (cap.) [Theol.]
   • the movement in Roman Catholic thought that sought to interpret the teachings of the Church in the light of philosophic and scientific conceptions prevalent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: condemned by Pope Pius X in 1907.
   • the liberal theological tendency in Protestantism in the 20th century.
4. Music and Dance, Literature, Fine Art (sometimes cap.) a deliberate philosophical and practical estrangement or divergence from the past in the arts and literature occurring esp. in the course of the 20th century and taking form in any of various innovative movements and styles.

• modern + -ism 1730–40

Collins Concise English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers::

modernism / ˈmɒdəˌnɪzəm/ noun

1. modern tendencies, characteristics, thoughts, etc, or the support of these
2. something typical of contemporary life or thought
3. a 20th-century divergence in the arts from previous traditions, esp in architecture
   See International Style
4. (capital) the movement at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries that sought to adapt doctrine to the supposed requirements of modern thought

ˈmodernist noun , adjective

ˌmodernˈistic adjective

ˌmodernˈistically adverb

WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2025

In′terna′tional Style′, 

1. Architecture the general form of architecture developed in the 1920s and 1930s by Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and others, characterized by simple geometric forms, large untextured, often white, surfaces, large areas of glass, and general use of steel or reinforced concrete construction.
2. Fine Art (sometimes l.c.) any of various 20th-century styles in art, as cubism or abstract expressionism, that have gained wide currency in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and elsewhere.
3. Fine Art See International Gothic. 
• 1930–35

Collins Concise English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers::

International Style, Modernism noun

1. a 20th-century architectural style characterized by undecorated rectilinear forms and the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete