• fideism •
Pronunciation: fee-day-i-zêm • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun, mass
Meaning: Reliance on faith as opposed to reasoning in religion issues and questions, faithism.
Notes: Today's word is a rarely used word for a commonplace assumption. It brings with it a personal noun or adjective, fideist and, for those times when we need one more syllable, another adjective, fideistic.
In Play: Fideism claims that evidence is irrelevant to religious argumentation: "William Ockham, to whom 'Ockham's Razor' is attributed, espoused fideism, claiming that 'only faith gives us access to theological truths'." Attempts to meld the two types of argument have been met with skepticism: "Joseph Glanvill argued that 'rational fideism' is the view that faith alone is the basis for our belief in reason."
Word History: Today's Good Word was borrowed from French fidéisme around 1885. French created it from Latin fide(s) "faith" + -isme, a noun suffix implying a doctrine of some kind. Latin fides was built on PIE bheidh- "to trust, persuade", source also of Dutch bidden "to pray", German bitten "to ask", English bid in the sense of "tell, invite, beseech", Norwegian be "to pray", Icelandic biðja "to pray", Russian ubedit' "to convince", Serbian ubediti "to convince", and Bulgarian ubezhdya "I convince". (Now let's recognize our old friend Agoran William Hupy, a most prolific contributor of Good Words since 2008, for suggesting yet another outstanding Good Word.)
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