as in liberal
a person with very modern ideas
a time when Paris was the center of the universe for modernists in the art world
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as in modern
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Recent Examples of modernist
Lee Sharrock, Forbes.com, 15 Sep. 2025
His restaurant sits in the courtyard of the Hotel Saint Augustine, an airy, modernist space brimming with sagebrush.
—The Bon Appétit Staff, Bon Appetit Magazine, 12 Sep. 2025
This was a departure from Pärt’s earlier modernist and experimental music, and expressed a yearslong struggle to reconcile his newfound commitment to Orthodox Christianity and his rigorous artistic ideals.
—Jeffers Engelhardt, The Conversation, 10 Sep. 2025
Suddenly panicked, Maria turns the car around and heads back to her boxy, modernist house with Danny and locks him in her basement.
—Leslie Felperin, HollywoodReporter, 7 Sep. 2025
In terms of design, the EliteBook Ultra G1i has the same sleek, modernist chassis as the Qualcomm Snapdragon version launched last year.
—PC Magazine, 7 Sep. 2025
Rossellini’s film is part of a distinctive canon of modernist melodramas that self-consciously acknowledge the tension of those oppositions and foreground their symbolic disruption of realistic conventions.
—Richard Brody, New Yorker, 4 Sep. 2025
The apparently simple farmhouse masks a far more complex—and modernist—interior world.
—Joseph Giovannini, Architectural Digest, 4 Sep. 2025
Joseph Eichler was a visionary real estate developer of the mid-20th century who revolutionized suburban housing by building over 11,000 affordable — yet architecturally distinctive —modernist homes across California.
—David Caraccio, Sacbee.com, 2 Sep. 2025
Jane Hanson, Forbes.com, 14 Sep. 2025
White Out is like something from the high-modernist era of Joyce and Woolf—dark, fragmented, impressionistic, saturated with irony and black humor.
—Scott Stossel, The Atlantic, 9 Sep. 2025
Only his near contemporary, the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens (who survived into old age), who weirdly enough also was a lawyer for an insurance company, rivals Kafka in terms of the inverse proportion of literary originality and canonical significance to dullness of life story.
—Leslie Felperin, HollywoodReporter, 8 Sep. 2025
The eighth annual World Championship in Massage was under way in a modernist, glass-and-concrete building owned by University College Copenhagen.
—Sarah Larson, New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2025
The still-unfinished Sagrada Família inspires awe with its Gothic-meets-modernist majesty—and enduring century-long construction timeline.
—AFAR Media, 3 Sep. 2025
Where Larsen explored modernist ambiguity and Hurston embraced folkloric Black expression, Fauset wrote in a more traditional style that some critics dismissed as too proper or assimilationist.
—Glory Edim
august 27, Literary Hub, 27 Aug. 2025
If mid-century or Italian modernist pieces aren’t your style, 2Modern’s vast inventory also includes more traditional office furniture.
—Kate McGregor, Architectural Digest, 27 Aug. 2025
The editing speeds up as the sequence draws to a close, paced by a score by the modernist composer and author Paul Bowles, whom Latouche recruited to the project.
—Big Think, 26 Aug. 2025
Noun
One season might pair Dutch Golden Age civic ideals with O’Keeffe’s modernist experimentation and Sarah Sze’s meditations on time and abstraction.
—Lee Sharrock, Forbes.com, 15 Sep. 2025
His restaurant sits in the courtyard of the Hotel Saint Augustine, an airy, modernist space brimming with sagebrush.
—The Bon Appétit Staff, Bon Appetit Magazine, 12 Sep. 2025
This was a departure from Pärt’s earlier modernist and experimental music, and expressed a yearslong struggle to reconcile his newfound commitment to Orthodox Christianity and his rigorous artistic ideals.
—Jeffers Engelhardt, The Conversation, 10 Sep. 2025
Suddenly panicked, Maria turns the car around and heads back to her boxy, modernist house with Danny and locks him in her basement.
—Leslie Felperin, HollywoodReporter, 7 Sep. 2025
In terms of design, the EliteBook Ultra G1i has the same sleek, modernist chassis as the Qualcomm Snapdragon version launched last year.
—PC Magazine, 7 Sep. 2025
Rossellini’s film is part of a distinctive canon of modernist melodramas that self-consciously acknowledge the tension of those oppositions and foreground their symbolic disruption of realistic conventions.
—Richard Brody, New Yorker, 4 Sep. 2025
The apparently simple farmhouse masks a far more complex—and modernist—interior world.
—Joseph Giovannini, Architectural Digest, 4 Sep. 2025
Joseph Eichler was a visionary real estate developer of the mid-20th century who revolutionized suburban housing by building over 11,000 affordable — yet architecturally distinctive —modernist homes across California.
—David Caraccio, Sacbee.com, 2 Sep. 2025
Adjective
Marc Jacobs’s Greenwich Village townhouse, Bjarke Ingels’s houseboat, and Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz’s modernist home all appear in the collection.
—Jane Hanson, Forbes.com, 14 Sep. 2025
White Out is like something from the high-modernist era of Joyce and Woolf—dark, fragmented, impressionistic, saturated with irony and black humor.
—Scott Stossel, The Atlantic, 9 Sep. 2025
Only his near contemporary, the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens (who survived into old age), who weirdly enough also was a lawyer for an insurance company, rivals Kafka in terms of the inverse proportion of literary originality and canonical significance to dullness of life story.
—Leslie Felperin, HollywoodReporter, 8 Sep. 2025
The eighth annual World Championship in Massage was under way in a modernist, glass-and-concrete building owned by University College Copenhagen.
—Sarah Larson, New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2025
The still-unfinished Sagrada Família inspires awe with its Gothic-meets-modernist majesty—and enduring century-long construction timeline.
—AFAR Media, 3 Sep. 2025
Where Larsen explored modernist ambiguity and Hurston embraced folkloric Black expression, Fauset wrote in a more traditional style that some critics dismissed as too proper or assimilationist.
—Glory Edim
august 27, Literary Hub, 27 Aug. 2025
If mid-century or Italian modernist pieces aren’t your style, 2Modern’s vast inventory also includes more traditional office furniture.
—Kate McGregor, Architectural Digest, 27 Aug. 2025
The editing speeds up as the sequence draws to a close, paced by a score by the modernist composer and author Paul Bowles, whom Latouche recruited to the project.
—Big Think, 26 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for modernist
Noun
-
Navratilova is known as a highly outspoken liberal as a former athlete.—
Jackson Thompson,
FOXNews.com,
18 Sep. 2025
-
Police have not released any further information about Corral, but angry social media users denounced him as a leftist and a liberal.—
Robert Birsel,
MSNBC Newsweek,
15 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
Still, the trouble with grafting modern assumptions onto distant historical eras is that the two usually mix like oil and water.—
Will Collins,
The Washington Examiner,
19 Sep. 2025
-
Built as a modern Mega Drive (or Genesis) game with a cartridge release planned next year, Earthion really pushes what that console can do.—
Ollie Barder,
Forbes.com,
19 Sep. 2025
Noun
-
Further east, the Russian revolutionaries of 1917 adopted a utopian faith in material progress and science.—
Sonja Fritzsche,
The Conversation,
9 Sep. 2025
-
The movie follows DiCaprio as a former political revolutionary named Bob Ferguson who goes on the run when a military leader named Steven Lockjaw (Penn) renews his search for Ferguson and his family.—
Tommy McArdle,
PEOPLE,
9 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
Though the contemporary design is undeniably sleek, the sofa is also ideal for everyday needs.—
Elizabeth Fogarty,
Better Homes & Gardens,
17 Sep. 2025
-
Her unique position as a contemporary violinist also sets her apart in an industry landscape often dominated by vocalists, rappers, and producers.—
Kimberly Wilson,
Essence,
17 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
Others suggested the 50-foot steel sculpture was a bird, a horse, a Viking ship, a baboon or a modernistic representation of Picasso’s dog.—
Kori Rumore,
Chicago Tribune,
15 Aug. 2025
Adjective
-
Inspired by a pile of cardboard and constructed using the same material, Frank Gehry’s luxe Wiggle chair functions as the perfect compact statement piece that will slot right in next to a library bookshelf or stand on its on in an ultramodern space.—
Kate McGregor,
Architectural Digest,
2 Sep. 2025
-
Cecilie Bahnsen’s Asics Mary Jane is ultramodern and childlike all at once, not dissimilar from the Danish designer’s line of romantic, frilly, and poofy, voluminous clothing.—
Hannah Dylan Pasternak,
SELF,
11 Aug. 2025
Adjective
-
The epic tale, which took place across past and present-day storylines, was told through several movies and a TV series that aired for six seasons in the '90s.—
Raechal Shewfelt,
Entertainment Weekly,
12 Sep. 2025
-
Nevertheless, while Raskin's ideas may have few present-day implementations, that doesn't mean the spirit in which they were proposed is dead, too.—
Cameron Kaiser,
ArsTechnica,
12 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
The poll also found that 51% of respondents perceive the current state of the economy as poor, and 61% express a lack of confidence that the economy will improve next year.—
Naomi Lim,
The Washington Examiner,
18 Sep. 2025
-
The pulling of Kimmel off the air comes less than nine weeks after CBS announced that The Late Show With Stephen Colbert would end after its current season—a decision that was widely viewed as politically motivated.—
Chad de Guzman,
Time,
18 Sep. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Modernist.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/modernist. Accessed 20 Sep. 2025.
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