Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An imagined place where government is of the worst; the opposite, in the character of its political institutions, of the ideal commonwealth which Sir Thomas More (1516) placed on his imaginary island Utopia (‘No-where’). See
Utopia .
Etymologies
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Examples
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Considerations such as the above serve to explain why writers and film directors since George Orwell's 1984 have depicted the future, not as paradise regained, but as a series of dystopias and cacotopias (perhaps the most memorable, after Orwell's haunting novel, was Anthony Burgess's more 'lyrical' cacotopia, "A Clockwork Orange", which found the perfect director in Stanley Kubrick, the misanthrope of the twentieth century).
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A dystopia (or alternatively cacotopia) is a fictional society, usually portrayed as existing in a future time, when the conditions of life are extremely bad due to deprivation, oppression, or terror.
Dystopia 1995
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According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term was coined in the late 19th century by British philosopher John Stuart Mill, who also used Jeremy Bentham's synonym, cacotopia.
Dystopia 1995
qms commented on the word cacotopia
Some theories of wealth quite confound:
They claim it will drain to the ground.
Such greedy myopia
Begets cacotopia
For we, the poor worms who will drown.
March 17, 2015