Word.ws English Dictionary

philistinism

philistinism noun: a materialistic attitude accompanied by ignorance of artistic or cultural matters.

Noun

philistinism (countable and uncountable, plural philistinisms)

  1. A materialistic attitude accompanied by ignorance of artistic or cultural matters.
    • It's impossible to tell the story of flamenco without talking about Lorca, who found in it a source of inspiration in a lifelong political-cultural-sexual struggle against bourgeois philistinism.2010 February 5, Mike Marqusee, “Flamenco's humane roots”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 23 Jan 2023

Forms of philistinism

pluralphilistinisms

Origin of philistinism

From philistine + -ism.

Questions about philistinism

What does philistinism mean?
Philistinism means a materialistic attitude accompanied by ignorance of artistic or cultural matters.
What part of speech is philistinism?
Philistinism is a noun.
What is the plural of philistinism?
The plural of philistinism is philistinisms.

Words near philistinism in the dictionary

  1. philistines
  2. Philistinian
  3. Philistinians
  4. philistinic
  5. philistinish
  6. philistinism
  7. philistinisms
  8. Phill
  9. phillabeg
  10. phillabegs
  11. Philley

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: philistinism (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:

Cite this entry: “philistinism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/philistinism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.