Definitions

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

  • noun The belief that the dead communicate with the living; spiritualism.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as spiritualism, 3.

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

  • noun Spiritualsm.

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

  • noun spiritualism

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

  • noun concern with things of the spirit

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

spirit +‎ -ism

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word spiritism.

Examples

  • Hugo's dabbling in spiritism at the time: Oh! Sefton,

    Alexis Soyer and the Rise of the Celebrity Chef 2007

  • Study and inquiry should eradicate the superstition and the fraud called spiritism, and people should be protected against a most dangerous and cowardly form of crime -- criminal hypnotism.

    Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men John William Harris

  • The phenomena of so-called spiritism, while not as yet justifying

    Modern Religious Cults and Movements Gaius Glenn Atkins 1912

  • “Mr. Arbitage, on the other hand, embraces the idea of spiritism, and of speaking with our dear departed ones on the Other Side.

    To Say Nothing of the Dog Willis, Connie 1997

  • "Then there was the giving heed to seducing spirits _and teachings of demons_ (demonology, called spiritism) '_forbidding to marry_'

    The Mark of the Beast Sidney Watson

  • "nerve-force," wherein, while admitting that great and good men believed in the phenomena of "spiritism," he concluded that they were overhasty in assigning causes.

    The Tyranny of the Dark Hamlin Garland 1900

  • But that is no reason that we should immediately account for it by labelling it spiritism.

    Jack London's Story - Moon Face: Planchette pg 3 of 3 2010

  • While the rest argued pro and con and the air was filled with phrases, — "psychic phenomena," "self-hypnotism," "residuum of unexplained truth," and "spiritism," — she was reviving mentally the girlhood pictures she had conjured of this soldier-father she had never seen.

    Jack London's Story - Moon Face: Planchette pg 3 of 3 2010

  • She could skin the ordinary kahuna lapaau (medicine man) when it came to praying to Lonopuha and Koleamoku; read dreams and visions and signs and omens and indigestions to beat the band; make the practitioners under the medicine god, Maiola, look like thirty cents; pull off a pule hoe incantation that would make them dizzy; and she claimed to a practice of kahuna hoenoho, which is modern spiritism, second to none.

    SHIN-BONES 2010

  • Inspiration of this type occurs in spiritism and in other religions, where the prophet writes down divine dictation in ecstasy.

    Modern Science in the Bible Ben Hobrink 2011

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.