Word of the Day

Friday, December 31, 1999

fin de siecle

\fan-duh-see-ECK-ul; faⁿ-duh-SYECK-luh\ , adjective;

A phrase mostly used adjectively in English to signify: belonging to, or characteristic of, the close of the (19th) century; hence, modern; ``up-to-date;'' sophisticated; world-weary; decadent.

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Quotes:

In fin de siecle Vienna--a period that really lasted into the early twentieth century--much of "modernity" was taking shape.

-- Henry Grunwald, One Man's America: A Journalist's Search for the Heart of His Country

This might also be a moment to reassess the broad range of priorities in your life, some of which may have been shoved aside in fin de siecle careerism and obsession with money.

-- "A Compass for Those Choppy Seas", New York Times, September 6, 1998

Thoroughly grounded as he is in what Richard Wilbur... simply and memorably called "the things of this world," this son of an Irish farming family [Seamus Heaney] offers a vision that is a powerful tonic against the fin de siecle alienation and solipsism touted by fashionable literary criticism.

-- "Poems Into Plowshares", New York Times, July 21, 1996

The last time the world saw anything like this fin de siecle surge in global economic cooperation was, coincidentally, the last time the world saw a fin de siecle.

-- David Hale, "A Second Chance", Fortune,, November 22, 1999

Origin:

Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century."