meliorism

noun

me·​lio·​rism ˈmēl-yə-ˌri-zəm 

ˈmē-lē-ə-

: the belief that the world tends to improve and that humans can aid its betterment

meliorist

ˈmēl-yə-rist 

ˈmē-lē-ə-

adjective or noun

melioristic

ˌmēl-yə-ˈri-stik 

ˌmē-lē-ə-

adjective

Did you know?

In 1877, British novelist George Eliot believed she had coined meliorist when she wrote, "I don't know that I ever heard anybody use the word 'meliorist' except myself." Her contemporaries credited her with coining both meliorist and meliorism, and one of her letters contains an early documented use of meliorism; however, there is evidence that meliorist had been around decades before she started using it. Whoever coined it did so by drawing on the Latin word melior, meaning "better." It is likely that the English coinages were also influenced by another melior descendant, meliorate, a synonym of ameliorate ("to make better or more tolerable") that was introduced to English in the 1500s.

Examples of meliorism in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Under their malign sway, as cost-benefit analysis became codified in government bureaus and standards of jurisprudence, previously bold Democrats reduced their dreams for betterment to feeble meliorism. —Idrees Kahloon, The New Yorker, 16 May 2022

Goodhart reckons the positional nature of status — man’s envy plays a part in this puzzle, mind you — and the kind of economic meliorism that the center-left of his formative years applies to income inequality may fail to do the trick this time. —Jorge González-Gallarza Hernández, National Review, 6 Dec. 2020

To its critics, this modesty and meliorism represent cowardice. —Rosa Inocencio Smith, The Atlantic, 10 Aug. 2017

Word History

First Known Use

1877, in the meaning defined above

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