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Sensationalism   /sɛnsˈeɪʃənəlˌɪzəm/   Listen
Sensationalism

noun
1.
Subject matter that is calculated to excite and please vulgar tastes.
2.
The journalistic use of subject matter that appeals to vulgar tastes.  Synonym: luridness.
3.
(philosophy) the ethical doctrine that feeling is the only criterion for what is good.  Synonym: sensualism.
4.
(philosophy) the doctrine that knowledge derives from experience.  Synonyms: empiricism, empiricist philosophy.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Sensationalism" Quotes from Famous Books



... about it a moment," she concluded, lowering her voice and taking advantage of the very novelty of the situation she had created. "Such diseases are the product of civilization, of sensationalism. Naturally enough, then, woman, with her delicately balanced nervous organization, is the first and chief offender—if you insist on calling such a person an offender under your antiquated methods ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve

... the post-classical period. Realistic portraiture was now practiced with great frequency and high success. Many of the genre statues and decorative reliefs of the time are admirable and delightful. Moreover, the old uses of sculpture were not abandoned, and though the tendency toward sensationalism was strong, a dignified and exalted work was sometimes achieved. But, broadly speaking, we must admit the loss of that "noble simplicity and quiet grandeur"—the phrase is Winckelmann's—which stamped the creations of the ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... significance to current happenings. Occurrences take place which in the western world would portend important changes—and nothing important results. It is not easy to loosen the habit of years; and so the visitor assumes that an event which is striking to the point of sensationalism must surely be part of a train of events having a definite trend; some deep-laid plan must be behind it. It takes a degree of intellectual patience added to time and experience to make one realize that even when there is a rhythm in events the tempo is so retarded that one must wait a long time ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey

... the movements of the leaders, the busy life behind the front, and the action of the big guns absorbed the popular interest in every corner of the world. While the picturesque old-time war reporter has almost disappeared, the moving picture man has inherited all his courage, patience, sensationalism, and ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... "the way I'll manage it. This is the age of the sensational—the yellow—and you people haven't been yellow enough in your methods of selling dirt. If you say sensationalism is immoral, I won't dispute it, but just simply ask how the fact happens to ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... compulsion, by patronage, or by favour, Art has become dependent; it must explain, exhort, contend; it can no longer rest proudly on itself. It must aim at getting a majority on its side, and this it can only do by sensationalism. Like all other features of intellectual life, it must march with the times. Like all technique, research, learning and handicraft it suffers through the loss, for several generations, of tradition and hereditary skill, but together with this drop there is also a drop in the character of ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... success of 'Dolores,' and Spiro Samara, a Greek by birth, but an Italian by training and sympathies, seems to have lost the secret of the delicate imagination which nearly made 'Flora Mirabilis' a European success, though his 'Martire,' a work of crude sensationalism, enjoyed an ephemeral success in Italy. Franchetti, the composer of 'Asrael,' 'Cristoforo Colombo,' and other works, conceived upon a scale grandiose rather than grand, appears anxious to emulate the theatrical glories of Meyerbeer, and to make up for poverty ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... so with music. Unless I give it its holy sovereignty it will become a minister of the passions, and the angel within me is mastered by a beast. Let me read again Tennyson's "Palace of Sin," and let me heedfully note how music becomes the instrument of ignoble sensationalism, and aids in man's degradation. "But exalt her, and she shall ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... saying, "My dear Jehu, I must apologize for keeping you in this position, but you must understand that the outcome of this war is very serious, and I will not risk it to your sensationalism." ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn

... observed, putting his paper away, "we are neglecting our dinner. Nothing like a good dose of sensationalism for giving us ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... real popular art—just as certain universal sentiments afforded the basis of folk-songs, which were constantly taken up and moulded into fine artistic forms. The Dop Doctor is a book compounded of vulgar sensationalism on the one hand, and a strange imaginative vigour and ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... advertising, a great sensationalism to keep up interest in the arrival of the singer. We went from our table to the pier to see her descend from the steamer. Triumphal arches of evergreens and flowers had been erected over the way she passed. A great crowd had collected. Bands were playing. Her face came into view. Shouts arose. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... to the sterner sex as has been shown by the flights made by Harriet Quimby and other daring young women. Girls who are fond of adventure will thoroughly enjoy reading these books, which are wholesome and free from sensationalism. ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade

... of its sensationalism, the Shagreen Skin had a success of curiosity equal, and, if anything, superior to that of the Physiology. The author, however, had to defend himself against the charge of copying foreign literature—Hoffman's tales in particular. One of his ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... from the broad glimpses it gives of a life whereof we Northern Americans know absolutely nothing, it is a beautiful story, sad in its ending, but free from any tinge of coarseness or sensationalism, pure, sweet, warm with human love and ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... jury (which was already being impaneled) into the schemes of the Boulevard Railway Company with the city councilmen. These proceedings were conducted as quietly as possible, but in spite of all precautions, the newspapers that evening flamed with head-lines, which varied as usual in size and sensationalism with the character of the sheet which used them; and before Roma retired for the night, the whole city was stirred by the prospect of a most spectacular fight. One half the citizens were congratulating themselves that at last, corruption and the spoilsmen were to be uprooted, ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow

... could see the Contessa's rapid, stoat-like sensationalism, Gudrun's ultimate but treacherous cleaving to the woman in her sister, Ursula's dangerous helplessness, as if she were ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... state of literature more hopeful, perhaps I should find pleasure in reading, but I have viewed with such increasing alarm the growth of sensationalism in the literary output of my age that I have felt that I owed it to my posterity, which is rapidly growing in numbers—I believe that the latest annual report of the Society of the Sons and Daughters of Methuselah shows a membership of ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... beyond praise. . . . It must rank with 'Greifenstein' as the best work the author has produced. It fulfils every requirement of artistic fiction. It brings out what is most impressive in human action, without owing any of its effectiveness to sensationalism or artifice. It is natural, fluent in evolution, accordant with experience, graphic in description, penetrating in analysis, and ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... all that), in which they are absorbed. Later on, at intervals, I get the volumes, and, raven-like, secrete them. I can quite understand the absorption of my young friends. Marvellous, Miss BRADDON! Very few have approached you in sensation-writing, and none in keeping up sensationalism as fresh as ever it was when first I sat up at night nervously to read Aurora Floyd, and Lady Audley's Secret. In this bad time of year (I am writing when the snow is without, and the North-East wind is engaged in cutting leaves), the Baron ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various

... immortal musketeers; but the result justifies the boldness.... The plot is admirably clear and strong, the diction singularly concise and telling, and the stirring events are so managed as not to degenerate into sensationalism. Few better novels of adventure than this have ever been written."—OUTLOOK, ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... Jean; not, we should imagine, to leave room for aliens and strangers. He has been again burlesqued for us rending himself in rhyme, and stretched on straw groaning elegiacs to Mary in heaven. All this is mere sensationalism provided for illiterate readers. We have the poem, and its ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun



Words linked to "Sensationalism" :   logical positivism, message, sensualism, sensationalistic, positivism, experimentalism, content, unsensational, philosophical doctrine, philosophical theory, substance, British empiricism, sensationalist, journalese, philosophy, subject matter, sensational



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