-ism (/-ˌɪzəm/) is asuffix in manyEnglish words, originally derived from theAncient Greek suffix-ισμός (-ismós), and reachedEnglish through theLatin-ismus, and theFrench-isme.[1] It is used to create abstract nouns of action, state, condition, or doctrine, and is often used to describephilosophies,theories,religions,social movements,artistic movements,lifestyles,[2]behaviors,scientific phenomena,[3] ormedical conditions.[4][5]
The concept of an -ism may resemble that of agrand narrative.[6]
Skeptics of any given -isms can quote the dictum attributed toEisenhower: "All -isms are wasms".[7]
The first recorded usage of the suffixism as a separate word in its own right was in 1680. By the nineteenth century it was being used byThomas Carlyle to signify a pre-packagedideology. It was later used in this sense by such writers asJulian Huxley andGeorge Bernard Shaw. In the United States of the mid-nineteenth century, the phrase "the isms" was used as a collective derogatory term to lump together the radical social reform movements of the day (such asslavery abolitionism,feminism,alcohol prohibitionism,Fourierism,pacifism, Technoism, earlysocialism, etc.) and various spiritual or religious movements considered non-mainstream by the standards of the time (such astranscendentalism,spiritualism,Mormonism etc.). Southerners often prided themselves on the American South being free from all of these pernicious "Isms" (except for alcohol temperance campaigning, which was compatible with a traditional Protestant focus on individual morality). So on September 5 and 9, 1856, theExaminer newspaper ofRichmond, Virginia, ran editorials on "Our Enemies, the Isms and their Purposes", while in 1858Parson Brownlow called for a "Missionary Society of the South, for the Conversion of the Freedom Shriekers, Spiritualists, Free-lovers, Fourierites, andInfidel Reformers of the North" (seeThe Freedom-of-thought Struggle in the Old South byClement Eaton). In the present day, it appears in the title of a standard survey of political thought,Today's Isms by William Ebenstein, first published in the 1950s, and now in its 11th edition.
In 2004, theOxford English Dictionary added two new draft definitions of -isms to reference their relationship to words that convey injustice:[8]
In December 2015,Merriam-Webster Dictionary declared -ism to be the Word of the Year.[9]
For examples of the use of -ism as a suffix:
[...] another grand narrative, no less compelling than the familiar succession of 'isms' [...]
As President Eisenhower allegedly said, 'All -isms are wasms'. [...] I hope to avoid the tyranny of the -isms [...].