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realism definition

re·al·ism (rē′ə liz′əm)

noun

  1. a tendency to face facts and be practical rather than imaginative or visionary
  2. the picturing in art and literature of people and things as they really appear to be, without idealizing
  3. Philos.
    1. the doctrine that universal or abstract terms are objectively actual
    2. the doctrine that material objects exist in themselves, apart from the mind's consciousness of them

Etymology: < Ger realismus < ModL < ML realis, real + -ismus, -ism

Webster's New World College Dictionary Copyright © 2009 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio.
Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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