[f. FALSE a. + -ISM.]
1. a. ‘An assertion or statement, the falsity of which is plainly apparent’ (W.) b. A platitude that has not even the merit of being true.
The word owes its meaning to the antithesis with truism; hence the two-fold application.
1840. Mill, Diss, & Disc. (1859), I. 209. Books like Mr. Colton’s ‘Lacon’—centos of trite truisms and trite falsisms pinched into epigrams.
1847. Lewes, Hist. Philos. (1853), 160. If so, it is a truism, if not, a falsism. Ibid. (1855), Goethe, II. VI. vii. 313. The ideas are no longer novel; they appear truisms or perhaps falsisms.
2. nonce-use. Falsity of representation, conceived as erected into a systematic principle of art.
1883. M. Blind, Life Geo. Eliot, 68. Realism is thus the basis of all Art, and its antithesis is not Idealism but Falsism.
