Modernism
Etymology
From “modern,” from Late Latin “modernus” (“of the present”), itself from Latin “modo” (“just now”). The “-ism” turns a general sense of being current into a specific aesthetic program of formal experiment and rejection of 19th-century convention. The label was applied across the arts in the first half of the 20th century.
noun · /MOD-ern-izm/
The early-20th-century movement across art, literature, and architecture that broke with tradition to reflect a fractured, industrial, rapidly changing world.
What it names
The deliberate rupture with the past — the “make it new” instinct — that still shapes how we read experimental art and clean, ornament-free design.
Example
The novel’s fragmented, stream-of-consciousness style marks it as high modernism.
Related idea
Distinguish it from postmodernism, which reacted against modernism’s faith in progress and grand designs by embracing irony, pastiche, and skepticism toward metanarrative.