dystopian.
An imaginary place or condition in which everything is as bad as possible; opposed to utopia n. (cf. Cacotopia n.).
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > perception or cognition > faculty of imagination > faculty of conceiving ideals > ideal place > [noun] > very bad place
Cacotopia1818
kakotopia1915
Ginny Gall1922
dystopia1952
1952 G. Negley & J. M. Patrick Quest for Utopia xvii. 298 The Mundus Alter et Idem [of Joseph Hall] is..the opposite of eutopia, the ideal society: it is a dystopia, if it is permissible to coin a word.
1962 C. Walsh From Utopia to Nightmare 11 The ‘dystopia’ or ‘inverted utopia’.
1967 Listener 5 Jan. 22 The modern classics—Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four—are dystopias. They describe not a world we should like to live in, but one we must be sure to avoid.
Derivatives
dysˈtopian n. one who advocates or describes a dystopia.
ΚΠ
1868 J. S. Mill in Hansard Commons 12 Mar. 1517/1 It is, perhaps, too complimentary to call them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dys-topians, or caco-topians. What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favour is too bad to be practicable.
dysˈtopian adj. of or pertaining to a dystopia.
ΚΠ
1962 C. Walsh From Utopia to Nightmare 12 Stories..that seemed in their dystopian way to be saying something important.
1968 New Scientist 11 July 96/3 It is a pleasant change to read some hope for our future... I fear that our real future is more likely to be dystopian.
dysˈtopianism n. dystopian quality or characteristics.
ΚΠ
1962 C. Walsh From Utopia to Nightmare ii. 27 A strand of utopianism or dystopianism.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1972; most recently modified version published online December 2020).
<
n.1868