Definitions

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

  • noun The beliefs, practices, or doctrine of an iconoclast.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of breaking or destroying images; specifically, a general destruction of the images and pictures set up in churches as objects of veneration carried out by the Iconoclasts in the eighth and ninth centuries, and by Protestants in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century.
  • noun Hence The act of attacking cherished beliefs or traditional institutions regarded as based on error or superstition: the doctrine or spirit of one who so attacks.

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

  • noun The doctrine or practice of the iconoclasts; image breaking.

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

  • noun The belief in, participation in, or sanction of destroying religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually with religious or political motives.

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

  • noun the orientation of an iconoclast

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Back-formation from iconoclast.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From iconoclast.

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Examples

  • Newspaper accounts of his life since his death two days ago indicate that he was derided by the reigning New York art world for his attachment to realism, whereas they reveled in iconoclasm or in iconoclastic iconism (Warhol et al.).

    Archive 2009-01-01 Linda 2009

  • Newspaper accounts of his life since his death two days ago indicate that he was derided by the reigning New York art world for his attachment to realism, whereas they reveled in iconoclasm or in iconoclastic iconism (Warhol et al.).

    On the Passing of Andrew Wyeth Linda 2009

  • Meanwhile, the thrill that comes with 1970s-style iconoclasm is no more.

    Media and the Reform Movement 2009

  • Romanticism could that desire (somewhat perversely) be associated with the sublime, so that a first-level iconoclasm is actually the hoped-for means by which words attain the animism of images?

    The Last Formalist, or W.J.T. Mitchell as Romantic Dinosaur 1997

  • His iconoclasm was the decadence of the social cesspool and the expurgation of money power which he believed was the ne plus ultra of anarchy and the genius of diabolic perfidy.

    The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 12 1919

  • Yet, this kind of iconoclasm had a narcotic effect.

    WHAT REALLY HAPPENED 2010

  • "In order to come to terms with a swelling 'iconoclasm', there is a need for visual competence, which our culture of the written word lacks.

    Eurozine articles 2009

  • The New York Times, however, asked readers to give the woman credit … She says her lines with feeling and puts her iconoclasm right out there where everyone can see it.

    Chloe Sevigny: the interview Eva Wiseman 2010

  • However, the FF's other bit of iconoclasm is its all-wheel-drive system FF=Ferrari Four.

    The Coolest Ferrari Ever—Drive Carefully Dan Neil 2011

  • Wimpy is well worth reading at a time when his brand of progressive, blue-collar iconoclasm is pretty rare, in the Machinists and other unions -- although Rose Ann DeMoro of the California Nurses Association does a pretty good job of keeping the Wimpy tradition alive.

    Steve Early: Does Labor Need Another Wimpy? Steve Early 2011

Comments

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  • This word feels a bit clunky to me.

    December 12, 2006

  • It's the 'clasm' half that bugs me.

    December 12, 2006

  • I actually love the word iconoclasm. When I say it, there's a specific expression I adopt.

    December 29, 2009

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    July 30, 2011