Meanings
- uncountableAn attitude that sees sociocultural changes (in general or in the present situation) as predominantly tending towards a less moral, less constructive, or generally worse state of affairs; particularly, the idea that at some point civilizations and cultures reach a peak after which they must inevitably decline.
One obvious consequence of our cultural pessimism is its paralysing grip on politics, since the first thing a successful politician has to sell is an optimistic vision of a better future.
2001 August 27, Madeleine Bunting, “The end is nigh: pessimism rules”, in The Guardian1 more example
But the word Abendland is a strikingly old-fashioned one, meaning literally “evening land” (ie where the sun sets). It was used by Oswald Spengler in his monumental post-first world war tract of German cultural pessimism, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, only weakly translated as The Decline of the West.
2015 January 18, Timothy Garton Ash, “Germany’s anti-Islamic movement Pegida is a vampire we must slay”, in The Guardian
Origin
Translations
German Kulturpessimismus
- KulturpessimismusTranslations
Cite this entry
cultural pessimism. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cultural%20pessimism
“cultural pessimism.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cultural%20pessimism. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cultural pessimism,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cultural%20pessimism.
Source: cultural pessimism on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.