brutalism
brutalism noun: brutal, violent behaviour; savagery. Also the alternative letter-case form of Brutalism.
Noun (1)
brutalism (countable and uncountable, plural brutalisms)
- Brutal, violent behaviour; savagery.
- Their punishments for crimes were of the most savage nature: and the absurdities of the Theodosian Code, together with the ancient customs of Germany, came to be all blended into a singular amalgamation of refinement and meanness,—of brutalism and bravery.1839, Earl of Clarendon, Speech to House of Lords, recorded in Mirror of Parliament, republished in 1840 January-June, The Eclectic Review, New Series, Volume 7, page 455
- Instances of misguidance like the ones given, and at least recognized in retrospect, in fascism, racism, and ecological brutalism, are also to be sensed by religious communication in other contexts.2012, Michael Welker, “Creation, the Concept of God, and the Nature of the Human Person in Christianity”, in Peter Koslowski, editor, The Concept of God, the Origin of the World, and the Image of the...
Noun (2) capitalized: Brutalism
Brutalism (uncountable)
- A style of modernist architecture characterized by angular geometry and overt signs of the construction process.
- In similar spirit, Nigel Henderson, a member of the Independent Group's Brutalist core, exhibited black and white photographs of the East End at the 1953 ICA show Parallel of Life and Art which stressed the unsanitised reality of everyday life: Peter Smithson's defence of Brutalism through the...2000, Katherine Shonfield, Walls Have Feelings: architecture, film and the city, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), page 20
- Nonetheless, despite its radical appearance, Brutalism could claim, if not legitimacy, at least ancestry in pre-World War II modernism.2004, B. M. Boyle, Brutalism, R. Stephen Sennott (editor), Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Architecture, Volume 1: A-F, Taylor & Francis (Fitzroy Dearborn), page 181
- Synonyms:
- New Brutalism
Also used as
brutalism is also the alternative letter-case form of Brutalism.
Synonyms of brutalism
- New Brutalism
Forms of brutalism
| plural | brutalisms |
|---|---|
| alternative form | brutalism |
Origin of brutalism
From brutal + -ism.
From brutal + -ism. Popularized in 1954 by the English architects Alison and Peter Smithson, from earlier Swedish nybrutalism (“New Brutalism”), after French béton brut (“raw concrete”), the material favored by Le Corbusier.
Words formed from brutalism
Questions about brutalism
- What does brutalism mean?
- Brutalism means brutal, violent behaviour; savagery.
- What part of speech is brutalism?
- Brutalism is a noun.
- What is the plural of brutalism?
- The plural of brutalism is brutalisms.
Words near brutalism in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: brutalism (page history and authors); Brutalism (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: “brutalism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/brutalism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.