orientalism

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The tendency to represent eastern subjects, to assume stylistical characteristics original of the East, especially in 19th century Europe.

   “Moreover, among the group that was associated with the short-lived Institut historique, of which Senancour was a member from 1834 to 1840, was Eugène Burnouf, the great orientalist, to whom much of the responsibility for the revived interest in orientalism of the mid-nineteenth century must be attributed.”

2. (countable)An Eastern word, expression, or custom.

   “The Scriptural style and the Scriptural language are not meant for one age, but for all ages. Its orientalisms will grow in the west; its archaisms will be found still young in the nineteenth century.”

3. (capitalized, countable, uncountable)A patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies.

   “Unlike the Americans, the French and the British—less so the Germans, Russians, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, and Swiss—have had a long tradition of what I shall be calling Orientalism, a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience.”

   “But he [Robert Irwin] is more lucid and reliable when he sets out to demonstrate the complexity and diversity of Orientalism, to defend his profession from the charge of being a conscious or unconscious accomplice of empire, and to decry the damage done by those whose reading even of Orientalism was probably superficial.”

4. (alt-of, countable, uncountable)Alternative letter-case form of orientalism.