décadent

comparative more décadent · superlative most décadent

1. alternativeAlternative spelling of decadent.

   It is not always easy for the uninitiated to discover the inner connections between proper names and their Décadent meaning.

   1900 September, C. H. A. Bjerregaard, “Décadents, Color and Sounds”, in Leander Edmund Whipple, editor, The Ideal Review: […], volume XIII, number 3, New York, N.Y.: The Metaphysical Publishing Co., […]; Paris: Brentano’s, […], page 196

   4 more examples

   Now this is the tale of A. B. / The grotesque black and white devotee, / The décadent fakir, / The Yellow Bookmaker, / The funny-man over the sea.

   1894 June 1, “The Yellow Bookmaker”, in The Chap-Book: […], volume I, number 2, Chicago, Ill.; Cambridge, Mass.: Stone & Kimball, page 42

   “Is it not that we shall all prize classic simplicity, in phrase or form, more than any jewelled splendour of décadent luxury?” said the Lay Figure.

   1895, “The Lay Figure in Paris”, in The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art, volume five, London, page xvi, column 2

   Nowadays—O irony of fate!—Moscow is enthusiastic over the Russian “Empire,” the “décadent style,” and Somov, as she was, yesterday, over Vasnetzov, Old-Russian palaces, cupboards, fairy-tales, and “bylinas” (old hero ballads).

   1916, Alexandre Benois, “The Contemporary State of Russian Painting”, in Abraham Yarmolinsky, transl., The Russian School of Painting, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, page 188

   The chalky pallor of his skin remarked upon by the narrator suggests, if not the décadent, at least the intellectual: he does indeed possess highly developed intellectual faculties, main evidence of which are his brilliant chess achievements.

   1980, D. B. Douglas, “The Humanist Gambit: A Study of Stefan Zweig’s Schachnovelle”, in AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Modern Language Association, page 18

plural décadents

1. alternativeAlternative spelling of decadent.

   Somov is a décadent not only in the philosophic import of his art, but also in his very technique and painting.

   1916, Alexandre Benois, “The Contemporary State of Russian Painting”, in Abraham Yarmolinsky, transl., The Russian School of Painting, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, page 183

   3 more examples

   The Décadent was speaking to his soul— / Poor useless thing, he said, / Why did God burden me with such as thou? / The body were enough, / The body gives me all.

   1892, Richard Le Gallienne, “The Décadent to His Soul”, in English Poems, London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane at The Bodley Head; New York: The Cassell Publishing Company, […], page 106

   It is true, that the senses have by the Décadents been declared the only purveyors, the only intermediaries, between ourselves and Universal Nature. But that charge, which to some would be a most terrible one, loses much of its character when we come to see what the Décadents understand by senses and discover that they mean something quite different from what our pseudo-philosophers ever thought; in fact there is nothing in their dictionaries that approaches what the Décadents mean.

   1900 September, C. H. A. Bjerregaard, “Décadents, Color and Sounds”, in Leander Edmund Whipple, editor, The Ideal Review: […], volume XIII, number 3, New York, N.Y.: The Metaphysical Publishing Co., […]; Paris: Brentano’s, […], page 193

   The décadent, as he is now called, decomposes the page into the paragraph, the paragraph into the sentence, the word, the letter.

   1906, James Huneker, “Richard Strauss”, in Philip Hale, editor, Famous Composers and Their Works, volume 5, Boston, Mass.: J. B. Millet Company, section I, page 165, column 1