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romanticism

noun

Simple meaning

An artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, peaking from 1800 to 1850.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

rohmantuhsihzuhm

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ɹoʊˈmæntəsɪzəm

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. A romantic quality, spirit or action.

  2. artmusic

    An artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, peaking from 1800 to 1850, characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
C2 · Proficient (estimated)
Frequency
Uncommon
Typical Use
Primarily written

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A romantic quality, spirit or action.

Used this way, romanticism is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in relationships contexts.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Where it naturally appears

  • Relationships

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use romanticism

  • “Romanticism valued imagination and emotion over rationality.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Artistic / movement

century romanticismeuropean romanticism

Other combinations

english romanticismamerican romanticismrevolutionary romanticism

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Related words

Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.

  • romanticadjectiveRelated term

    Belonging to or characteristic of Romanticism or the Romantic Movement in the arts.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.