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Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This

ni·hil·ism

Audio Help [nahy-uh-liz-uh

m, nee-] Pronunciation Key

–noun

1.	total rejection of established laws and institutions.

2.	anarchy, terrorism, or other revolutionary activity.

3.	total and absolute destructiveness, esp. toward the world at large and including oneself: the power-mad nihilism that marked Hitler's last years.

Philosophy.

a.	an extreme form of skepticism: the denial of all real existence or the possibility of an objective basis for truth.

b.	nothingness or nonexistence.

(sometimes initial capital letter

) the principles of a Russian revolutionary group, active in the latter half of the 19th century, holding that existing social and political institutions must be destroyed in order to clear the way for a new state of society and employing extreme measures, including terrorism and assassination.

6.	annihilation of the self, or the individual consciousness, esp. as an aspect of mystical experience.

[Origin: 1810–20; < L nihil nothing (var. of nihilum; see nil) + -ism

]

—Related forms

ni·hil·ist, noun, adjective

ni·hil·is·tic, adjective

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

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nihilism

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American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

ni·hil·ism Audio Help (nī'ə-lĭz'əm, nē'-) Pronunciation Key
n.

Philosophy
1. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.
2. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
Rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate all previous theories of morality or religious belief.
The belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement.
also Nihilism A diffuse, revolutionary movement of mid 19th-century Russia that scorned authority and tradition and believed in reason, materialism, and radical change in society and government through terrorism and assassination.
Psychiatry A delusion, experienced in some mental disorders, that the world or one's mind, body, or self does not exist.

[Latin nihil, nothing; see ne in Indo-European roots + -ism.]

ni'hil·ist n., ni'hil·is'tic adj., ni'hil·is'ti·cal·ly adv.

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The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
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Online Etymology Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
nihilism

1817, "the doctrine of negation" (in ref. to religion or morals), from Ger. Nihilismus, from L. nihil "nothing at all" (see nil), coined by Ger. philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819). In philosophy, an extreme form of skepticism (1836). The political sense was first used by Ger. journalist Joseph von Görres (1776-1848). Turgenev used the Rus. form of the word (nigilizm) in "Fathers and Children" (1862) and claimed to have invented it. With a capital N-, it refers to the Rus. revolutionary anarchism of the period 1860-1917, supposedly so called because "nothing" that then existed found favor in their eyes. Nihilist first attested 1836, in the religious or philosophical sense; in the Rus. political sense, it is recorded from 1871.

WordNet - Cite This Source - Share This

nihilism
noun
1.	a revolutionary doctrine that advocates destruction of the social system for its own sake
2.	the delusion that things (or everything, including the self) do not exist; a sense that everything is unreal [syn: nihilistic delusion]
3.	complete denial of all established authority and institutions

American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition - Cite This Source - Share This
nihilism [(neye-uh-liz-uhm, nee-uh-liz-uhm)]

An approach to philosophy that holds that human life is meaningless and that all religions, laws, moral codes, and political systems are thoroughly empty and false. The term is from the Latin nihil, meaning “nothing.”

[Chapter:] World Literature, Philosophy, and Religion

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

Nihilism

Ni"hil*ism\, n. [L. nihil nothing: cf. F. nihilisme. See Annihilate.]

1. Nothingness; nihility.

2. The doctrine that nothing can be known; scepticism as to all knowledge and all reality.

3. (Politics) The theories and practices of the Nihilists.

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