fin de siècle

alternative fin-de-siècle · alternative fin de siecle

1. not comparablePertaining to the close of the 19th century, usually suggesting a literary and artistic climate of modernism, world-weariness, and self-indulgence.

   The fin-de-siècle phenomenon has, of course, received considerable attention from historians in the recent past—a testament to its appeal. […] They also tend to concentrate on individual as well as social alienation as particularly characteristic of the fin-de-siècle feeling.

   1990, Mikulas Teich, Roy Porter, Fin de Siècle and Its Legacy, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 3

2. broadlynot comparablePertaining to the close of the 20th (or any other) century.

   And, Dag, have you ever noticed that your bungalow looks more like it belongs to a pair of Eisenhower era Allentown, Pennsylvania newlyweds than it does to a fin de siècle existentialist poseur?

   1991, Douglas Coupland, “Eat Your Parents”, in Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, →ISBN, page 85

plural fins de siècle · alternative fin-de-siècle · alternative fin de siecle

1. The closing era of any century; (loosely) the end of any era.

   1 more example

   From these conversations, most of which took place on the condition of anonymity to speak freely, a picture emerged in which America's closest allies are looking on with a kind of stunned incomprehension, unsure of what will happen, what it means, and what they should do, largely bound together with angst and a shared sense, as one influential adviser told me, that America and the West are approaching something of a fin de siècle.

   2020 June 24, Tom McTague, “The Decline of the American World”, in The Atlantic