cosmopolitanism

[ koz-muh-pol-i-tn-iz-uhm ]

noun

1. the fact or condition of belonging to all the world and not just one part, or of being at home all over the world:

   My cosmopolitanism is the result of a childhood being towed around the world by a restless father.

   Most studies of Victorian literature focus on the cosmopolitanism and global reach of realism.

2. freedom from local or national ideas, values, and prejudices:

   Countries hosting this event will be able to join in a global celebration of cosmopolitanism and cultural diversity.

3. Botany, Zoology. the fact or property of being widely distributed over the globe:

   By more minutely tracing the relations of the freshwater fauna to those of the marine fauna, perhaps the cosmopolitanism of freshwater animals can be explained.

Other Words From

• non·cos·mo·pol·i·tan·ism noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of cosmopolitanism¹

cosmopolitan ( def ) + -ism ( def )

Example Sentences

In the 1950s and ’60s, as the apartheid government enforced an increasingly brutal code of racial hierarchy, South African musicians, poets, artists, radical clergy and organizers found in this music a symbol of Black cosmopolitanism, interracial experimentation and free thought — all anathema to the regime.

From New York Times

“It was seen as an affirmation of him in terms of his status as a leading Muslim politician, but also as an affirmation of London in terms of its diversity, its liberalism, its cosmopolitanism,” Diamond said.

From Seattle Times

Having lived in Guadeloupe, France, West Africa and the United States, Ms. Condé was able to imbue her work with a kaleidoscopic cosmopolitanism; she was equally at home with memoirs, novels set in 18th-century Mali and 17th-century Massachusetts, and even a book of food writing.

From New York Times

Mr Suraiya spiritedly defended the magazine: "JS spoke to a certain urban educated cultural sensibility that was in a sense, Westernised, but it was shaping a distinctly Indian cosmopolitanism".

From BBC

As Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley has explained, "Fascism appeals to an imaginary and glorious past destroyed by the forces of liberalism, cosmopolitanism and globalism."

From Salon

Related Words

• elegance
• flair
• grace
• mode
• sophistication
• taste
• thing