Word.ws English Dictionary

efilism

/ˈɛfɪlɪzəm/

efilism noun: an extremist, negative utilitarian pro-mortalist, antinatalist ideology proposed by Gary Mosher which endorses the forced extinction of all life on Earth.

Noun

efilism (uncountable)

  1. An extremist, negative utilitarian pro-mortalist, antinatalist ideology proposed by Gary Mosher which endorses the forced extinction of all life on Earth.
    • They've identified a reference to the ancient Syracusian practice of banishment known as petalism, and what may or may not be a reference to efilism, a branch of the antinatalist philosophical position advanced by Schopenhauer, but what any of that has to do with the lyrics' subsequent allusions to...2014 July 24, Alexis Petridis, “Shabazz Palaces: Lese Majesty review – spectacular, way-out hip-hop”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 25 Jul 2014
    • The meeting, held at a cafe, had people from other lines of philosophy too, from feminists, vegans to efilists. Of which, efilism is another extreme.2019 February 11, Barkha Kumari, “Stop making babies”, in Bangalore Mirror, archived from the original on 13 Dec 2022

Examples of efilism in a sentence

  • Efilism has a vague correspondence with utilitarianism but emphasizes the suffering of life over utilitarianism’s greater good.2020, Patricia MacCormack, The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene, Bloomsbury Academic, →ISBN, page 153:
  • Ahuman antinatalism is not efilism (the end-all-carbon-based-life fetishization of Buddhism) and it is not genocide, eugenics, or any other thoroughly human hierarchical form of violence.2020, Rick Dolphijn, “The Non-Human, Systems, and New Materialism”, in Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, Jacob Wamberg, editors, The Bloomsbury...

Origin of efilism

From life reversed + -ism.

Questions about efilism

What does efilism mean?
Efilism means an extremist, negative utilitarian pro-mortalist, antinatalist ideology proposed by Gary Mosher which endorses the forced extinction of all life on Earth.
How do you use efilism in a sentence?
Efilism has a vague correspondence with utilitarianism but emphasizes the suffering of life over utilitarianism’s greater good.
What part of speech is efilism?
Efilism is a noun.
How do you pronounce efilism?
Efilism is pronounced /ˈɛfɪlɪzəm/.

Words near efilism in the dictionary

  1. EFI
  2. eficillin
  3. EFIGS
  4. Efik
  5. Efiks
  6. efilism
  7. efilist
  8. efilists
  9. Efimov
  10. Efimov state
  11. Efimov states

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: efilism (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: “efilism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/efilism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.