CHAUVINISM • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Chauvinism

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/ʃˈoʊvənˌɪzəm/ Listen

noun

Chauvinism n.

Blind and absurd devotion to a fallen leader or an obsolete cause; hence, absurdly vainglorious or exaggerated patriotism.

Exaggerated and unreasoning partisanship to any group or cause; as, male chauvinism, i.e. belief in the superiority of males. Note: To have a generous belief in the greatness of one's country is not chauvinism. It is the character of the latter quality to be wildly extravagant, to be fretful and childish and silly, to resent a doubt as an insult, and to offend by its very frankness.

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Etymology of 'Chauvinism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Chauvinism" Quotes from Famous Books

... for he used it in a series of articles which have become immortal in the political annals of North Carolina. These have always been known as the "Mummy letters." They furnished a vivid but rather aggravating explanation for the existing backwardness and chauvinism of the commonwealth. All the trouble, it seems, was caused by the "mummies." "It is an awfully discouraging business," Page wrote, "to undertake to prove to a mummy that it is a mummy. You go up to it and say, ...

— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... both the Russian alliance and English friendship for purposes in Morocco and elsewhere which had not been quite relished in England; and intervention in continental wars between two balanced alliances would have found few friends but for recent German chauvinism. It might well seem that in the absence of definite obligations and after having exhausted all means of averting war, Great Britain was entitled to maintain an attitude of benevolent neutrality, reserving her efforts for a later period when better prepared she ...

— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... nor Brunetiere for declaring that 'Ni la nature ni l'histoire n'ont en effet voulu que les hommes fussent tous freres.' But French Neo-catholicism, a bourgeois movement directed against all the 'ideas of 1789,' seems to have adopted the most ferocious kind of chauvinism. M. Paul Bourget wrote the other day in the Echo de Paris, 'This war must be the first of many, since we cannot exterminate sixty-five million Germans in a single campaign!' The women and children too! This is not the way to revive the religion of ...

— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... every respect in. France) the Moussorgsky cult of the last few years was a mere outgrowth of the political affiliation between France and Russia; as such it may be looked upon in the same light as the sudden appreciation of Berlioz which was a product of the Chauvinism which followed the Franco-Prussian War. It is easy even for young people of the day in which I write to remember when a Wagner opera at the Academie Nationale raised a riot, and when the dances at the Moulin Rouge and such places could not ...

— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... political ideas were diametrically opposed to those of her son. Her love of art made her pro-French, and her visit to Paris, it will be remembered, not being made incognito, led to international unpleasantness, originating in the foolish Chauvinism of some leading French painters whose ateliers she desired to inspect. She believed in a homogeneous German Empire without any federation of kingdoms and states, advocated a Constitution for Russia, and was satisfied that the common sense of a people outweighed its ignorance ...

— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw