modernism

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Modern thought, character, or practice.
• noun Sympathy with or conformity to modern ideas, practices, or standards.
• noun A peculiarity of usage or style, as of a word or phrase, that is characteristic of modern times.
• noun The deliberate departure from tradition and the use of innovative forms of expression that distinguish many styles in the arts and literature of the 1900s.
• noun A Roman Catholic movement, officially condemned in 1907, that attempted to examine traditional belief according to contemporary philosophy, criticism, and historiography.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A deviation from ancient manner or practice; something recently made or introduced; especially, a modern phrase, idiom, or mode of expression.
• noun Modern cast or character; a modern method of thinking, or the habit of regarding matters from a modern point of view.
• noun Specifically, a tendency among Roman Catholics to modern and progressive views condemned by Pius X. in an encyclical issued in 1907.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun Modern practice; a thing of recent date; esp., a modern usage or mode of expression.
• noun Certain methods and tendencies which, in Biblical questions, apologetics, and the theory of dogma, in the endeavor to reconcile the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church with the conclusions of modern science, replace the authority of the church by purely subjective criteria; -- so called officially by Pope Pius X.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun uncountable Modern or contemporary ideas, thought, practices, etc.
• noun countable Anything that is characteristic of modernity.
• noun any of several styles of art, architecture, literature, philosophy, etc., that flourished in the 20th century
• noun a religious movement in the early 20th century that tried to reconcile Roman Catholic dogma with modern science and philosophy

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the quality of being current or of the present
• noun genre of art and literature that makes a self-conscious break with previous genres
• noun practices typical of contemporary life or thought