-ism
/-ɪz(ə)m/
-ism suffix: used to form nouns of action, process, or result based on the accompanying verb ending in -ise or -ize. Also the alternative form of ism.
Suffix
-ism (noun-forming suffix, countable and uncountable, plural -isms)
- Used to form nouns of action, process, or result based on the accompanying verb ending in -ise or -ize.
- baptism (1300), aphorism (1528), criticism (1607), magnetism (1616)
- Used to form the name of a school of thought, system, or theory based on the name of its subject or object or alternatively on the name of its founder (When de-capitalized, these overlap with the generic "doctrines" sense below, e.g. Liberalism vs. liberalism.)
- Lutheranism (1560), Calvinism (1570), Protestantism (1606), Congregationalism (1716), Mohammedanism (1815),: Palamism (1949)
- Used to form names of a tendency of action, behaviour, condition, opinion, or state belonging to a class or group of persons, or the result of a doctrine, ideology, or principle or lack thereof.
- atheism (1587), ruffianism (1589), giantism (1639), fanaticism (1652), theism (1678), religionism (1706), patriotism (1716), heroism (1717), despotism (1728), old-maidism (1776), capitalism (1792), nationism (1798), romanticism (1803), conservatism (1832), sexualism (1842), vegetarianism (1848)...
- Howard didn't care much for beer, but that night he helped himself to three cans of Vi's new find nevertheless. Vi commented on it, said that if she had known he was going to like it that much, she would have stopped by the drugstore and gotten him an IV hookup. Another time-honored Vi-ism.1990, Stephen King, The Moving Finger
- Used to form countable nouns indicating a peculiarity or characteristic of language
- Atticism (1612), Gallicism (1656), archaism (1709), Americanism (1781), colloquialism (1834), newspaperism (1838), Shakespearianism (1886)
- Note that these sayings attributed to Yogi Berra might be apocryphal […] These sayings remain, however, quintessential Berraisms.2010, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York: Random House, →ISBN, page 136
- Used to form names of ideologies expressing belief in the superiority of a certain class within the concept expressed by the root word, or a pattern of behavior or a social norm that benefits members of the group indicated by the root word. (Based on a late 20th-century narrowing of the "terms for a doctrine" sense.)
- racism (1932), sexism (1936), classism (1971), speciesism (1975), heterosexism (1979), ableism (1981)
- Used to form names of conditions (syndromes, diseases, disorders, defects, addictions) and therapeutical methods or doctrines.
- aleydigism, daturism, senilism, teratism, cocainism, climatism, humorism
Also used as
-ism is also the alternative form of ism.
-ism meaning in Bengali, Arabic, Persian and Myanmar
-ism in Bengali
- a principle, belief or movement
- বাদ bad
-ism in Arabic
- a principle, belief or movement
- ـِيَّة -iyya
-ism in Persian
- a principle, belief or movement
- ـیسم -ism, گرایی gerâi, پرستی parasti
-ism in Myanmar
- a principle, belief or movement
- ဝါဒ wada.
Forms of -ism
| Suffix | |
|---|---|
| plural | -isms |
| Noun | |
| plural | -isms |
Origin of -ism
Ultimately from Ancient Greek -ισμός (-ismós), a suffix that forms abstract nouns of action, state, condition, doctrine, from the stem of verbs in -ίζειν (-ízein) (whence English -ize). Doublet of -ismus. Many English nouns in -ism are loans of Greek nouns in -ισμός (-ismós), often via Latin and French, such as Judaism, a learned English formation from Latin attested from c. 1500 and ultimately from Ancient Greek Ἰουδαϊσμός (Ioudaïsmós). In Late Latin, the -ismus suffix became the ordinary ending for names of religions and ecclesiastical or philosophical systems or schools of thought, thus chrīstiānismus (whence 16th c. Christianism) in Tertullian, a trend continued in Medieval Latin, with e.g. pāgānismus attested by the 8th century. From the 16th century, such formations became very common in English, until the early 18th century mostly restricted to either root words of Greek or Latin origin (heroism, patriotism) or proper names (Calvinism, Lutheranism). Productivity from root words with evidently non-Latin and non-Greek origin dates to the late 18th century (e.g. blackguardism). Reflecting this productivity, use of ism as a standalone noun is attested in Edward Pettit (1680)...
Words formed from -ism
Questions about -ism
- What does -ism mean?
- -ism means used to form nouns of action, process, or result based on the accompanying verb ending in -ise or -ize.
- What is -ism in Bengali?
- -ism in Bengali is বাদ (bad). See -ism meaning in Bengali.
- What part of speech is -ism?
- -ism is a suffix.
- How do you pronounce -ism?
- -ism is pronounced /-ɪz(ə)m/.
Words near -ism in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: -ism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl--ism.wav.
Cite this entry: “-ism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-ism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.