Definitions

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

  • noun Realism in art and literature.

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

  • noun art, literature Presenting common, everyday subjects, specifically eschewing the heroic or legendary.
  • noun art A movement in the late 19th century, related to realism

Etymologies

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

[Italian verismo, from vero, true, from Latin vērus; see wērə-o- in Indo-European roots.]

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Examples

  • You may select from more than 20,000 verism tapes, several hundred of which ... have only recently been added to the collection.

    All Our Yesterdays 1966

  • Reymont learned from Zola's work as a whole - its searching description of the environment, its orchestral mass effects, its uncompromising verism, and the harmonious working together of external nature and human life.

    Nobel Prize in Literature 1924 - Presentation 1924

  • Raw and desperate almost to the point of verism, this laptop duo - who started as an art project - are revolutionary reaction personified, just in time, even if the straights won't ever bite.

    Glide Magazine - Music :: Culture :: Life 2009

Comments

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  • Artistic preference of the everyday to the legendary. (From The Phrontistery)

    July 5, 2008

  • Compiling my beach reading queue

    I like an O’Brian or two.

    But swashbuckling numbers

    Disrupt my sweet slumbers -

    At bedtime verism will do.

    May 3, 2018