fin de siècle
1
9.9
- noun
- /fæn də ˈsiːɛkl/
- Literature
:
fin de siglo
- European historians refer to the period from 1890 to 1914 as the fin de siècle or the Belle Époque.
- fin-de-siècle writers
Examples
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A number of fin-de-siècle writers turned to the crowd as a subject of unnerving fascination.
Academic text (2015) -
Scholarly articles often analyze the cultural shifts that define the fin de siècle era, particularly in literature and philosophy.
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To draw a connection between recent ecological thought and that of the fin de siècle is not without risks.
Academic text (2016) -
Masud Khan had suddenly become both subject and object, the conflicted model of the Jew within fin-de-siècle science.
Academic text (1990) -
But at this hideous start to the fin de siècle, it is apparent that the road is short from Monrovia to Baghdad.
Academic text (1991) -
The same attention to the ethics of vision structures a significant portion of Vallotton's fin-de-siècle drawings and prints, in which the physical and psychological pressure of human proximity is a primary theme.
Academic text (2015) -
The culture of the dual monarchy and the comfortable stimulation of fin de siècle Vienna were now as distant as classical Greece.
Academic text (1991) -
In particular, they captured the particular fin-de-siècle Zeitgeist of blurred boundaries between method and substance, object and value, facticity and normativity.
Academic text (2016) -
His letter, appearing in the UW Daily, may well merit a place in some future museum tracing fin de siècle developments in antisemitism.
Academic text (1992) -
Boyer, Robert (ed.). 1986. Capitalismes fin de siècle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Academic text (1999)
Synonyms
1
9.9
About the end of a century, especially the late 19th century, showing cultural change and moral decline
Surface Forms
Morphology
fin + de + siècle
If a learner knows the constituents (fin = end, de = of, siècle = century) they can readily derive the literal meaning 'end of the century', so the compositional core is transparent. However, the conventional English use carries stylistic/decadent connotations (fashionable decadence, world‑weariness) that are not predictable from the literal parts, so the phrase is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Fin de siècle comes from French: fin (end) + siècle (century), literally 'end of the century'. People used it to name the late 1800s mood of beauty mixed with decay and tiredness, so today it refers to that period or to a mood of 'decay' and 'weariness'.