authenticism
authenticism noun: a belief in the superiority of the authentic over the inauthentic.
Noun
authenticism (usually uncountable, plural authenticisms)
- A belief in the superiority of the authentic over the inauthentic.
- Sinclair Lewis claimed that American letters exemplified a divorce of intellectual life from authenticism and reality.1994, Allene Cooper, “Science and the Reception of Poetry in Postbellum American Journals”, in American Periodicals, Vol. 4, p. 44 n4
- If performers of Early Music—and especially medieval music—could no longer appeal to an unattainable authenticity, they could nevertheless adhere unabashedly and tenaciously to the values and precepts that spawned authenticism in the first place, namely a comprehension of, and a stalwart respect...2006, Jonathan Shull, “Locating the Past in the Present: Living Traditions and the Performance of Early Music”, in Ethnomusicology Forum, volume 15, number 1, page 91
Forms of authenticism
| plural | authenticisms |
|---|
Origin of authenticism
From authentic + -ism.
Questions about authenticism
- What does authenticism mean?
- Authenticism means a belief in the superiority of the authentic over the inauthentic.
- What part of speech is authenticism?
- Authenticism is a noun.
- What is the plural of authenticism?
- The plural of authenticism is authenticisms.
Words near authenticism in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: authenticism (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.
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Cite this entry: “authenticism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/authenticism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.