Word.ws English Dictionary

emotivism

emotivism noun: the meta-ethical stance that ethical judgments, such as those containing the words "should" and "ought to", are primarily expressions of one's own attitude and imperatives meant to change the attitudes and actions of another.

Noun

emotivism (countable and uncountable, plural emotivisms)

  1. The meta-ethical stance that ethical judgments, such as those containing the words "should" and "ought to", are primarily expressions of one's own attitude and imperatives meant to change the attitudes and actions of another.
    • Another important meta-ethical theory is known as emotivism or non-cognitivism. Emotivists ... claim that all ethical statements are literally meaningless.1999, Nigel Warburton, Philosophy: The Basics

Forms of emotivism

pluralemotivisms

Origin of emotivism

From emotive + -ism.

Questions about emotivism

What does emotivism mean?
Emotivism means the meta-ethical stance that ethical judgments, such as those containing the words "should" and "ought to", are primarily expressions of one's own attitude and imperatives meant to change the attitudes and actions of another.
What part of speech is emotivism?
Emotivism is a noun.
What is the plural of emotivism?
The plural of emotivism is emotivisms.

Words near emotivism in the dictionary

  1. emotive
  2. emotive hardcore
  3. emotively
  4. emotiveness
  5. emotives
  6. emotivism
  7. emotivisms
  8. emotivist
  9. emotivists
  10. emotivities
  11. emotivity

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: emotivism (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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