Word.ws English Dictionary

presentisms

presentisms is the plural of presentism.

Meaning of presentism

Noun

presentism (countable and uncountable, plural presentisms)

  1. The view that neither the future nor the past exist (events and entities that are wholly past or wholly future do not exist at all).
  2. The belief that only current phenomena are relevant.
    • Despite the breathless presentism of the current discourse, scholarly debate on the nature of community did not originate with the introduction of new computer technologies, but arose out of earlier concerns about the transition from agrarian to urban industrial societies.2000, Keith Hampton, Barry Wellman, “Examining Community in the Digital Neighborhood: Early Results from Canada's Wired Suburb.”, in Toru Ishida, Katherine Isbister, editors, Digital Cities...
  3. The ahistorical interpretation of past phenomena in terms of current beliefs and knowledge.
    • One of the driving ideas on the left right now is presentism: the notion that figures from the past can legitimately be judged by contemporary mores and values. So the Founding Fathers are cast less as architects of the new Republic, and more as slaveholders and white oppressors.2021 June 18, Nick Bryant, “Once the future, US now captive to its past”, in BBC News

Questions about presentisms

What is presentisms the plural of?
Presentisms is the plural of presentism.

Words near presentisms in the dictionary

  1. presenting problem
  2. presenting problems
  3. presention
  4. presentions
  5. presentism
  6. presentisms
  7. presentist
  8. presentists
  9. presentities
  10. presentity
  11. presentive

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: presentisms (page history and authors); presentism (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: “presentisms.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/presentisms. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.