Etymology

fin de siècle

Today it means: Pertaining to the close of the 19th century, usually suggesting a literary and artistic climate of modernism, world-weariness, and self-indulgence. Full definition →

French fin-de-siècle
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. French · borrowed fromfin-de-siècle
  2. English todayfin de siècle

Borrowed from French fin-de-siècle (literally “end of the century”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.