Endism: The belief that something of significant scope and duration, particularly something negative, is coming to an end. (Source: Word Spy.)
Endism can also refer to the end of something positive. I came across the latter meaning in two excellent posts about the future of Silicon Valley by Lance Knobel of Davos Newbies. In the first, published March 26, he wrote about the worries of Valley CEOs:
He concluded: "I’m usually skeptical of endism, but my day yesterday had me thinking in distinctly endist ways."
The following day, Knobel gave reasons to see the glass as half full. First among them: "Endism is always suspect."
In 2005, Chris Anderson (author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More) wrote about endism in the context of publishing:
I once searched Amazon for book titles that began with "The End of..." I stopped counting at 43. On one end of the spectrum were the personal titles: The End of Diets, The End of Homework. On the other end were the global-disaster titles: The End of Oil, The End of History, The End of American Exceptionalism. My conclusion: If you want to sell a book, you can't go wrong with endism.
I frequently apply this term to diets. So I guess that's slendism.
Posted by: Duchesse | April 10, 2009 at 06:07 AM