meliorism

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The Word of the Day for April 16 is:

meliorism   \MEE-lee-uh-riz-um\   noun 
     : the belief that the world tends to improve and that humans can aid its 
betterment 

Example sentence: 
     Jane's resolute meliorism fueled her insistence that both world peace and 
the worldwide eradication of hunger were indeed attainable within her lifetime.

Did you know? 
     In 1877, British novelist George Eliot believed she had coined "meliorist" 
when she wrote, "I don't know that I ever heard anybody use the word 
'meliorist' except myself." Her contemporaries credited her with coining both 
"meliorist" and "meliorism," and one of her letters contains the first 
documented use of "meliorism," but there is evidence that at least "meliorist" 
had been around for 30 years or so before she started using it. Whoever coined 
it did so by drawing on the Latin "melior," meaning "better." It is likely that 
the English coinages were also influenced by another "melior" descendant, 
"meliorate," a synonym of "ameliorate" ("to make better") that was introduced 
to English in the mid-1500s.





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