disanthropy means A misanthropic desire for a world without human life, expressed in literature. It carries an Arena rating of 1273, earned across 6 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, disanthropy ranks #1,725 of 12,388 for Most Sublime Words, #1,750 of 12,399 for The Improbable, #2,517 of 12,624 for Funniest Words, #2,587 of 12,617 for Scariest Words.
disanthropy is pronounced /dɪsˈænθɹəpi/.
Why “disanthropy” is a great word
A secular, aesthetic longing for a world entirely emptied of human life, often expressed through literature. From the prefix dis- (meaning 'against; not') + the suffix -anthropy (meaning 'humanity'), modelled after misanthropy; coined in 2012 by the Canadian literary critic Greg Garrard. Unlike misanthropy, a general hatred of humankind, or apocalypticism, a vision of catastrophic judgment and potential renewal, disanthropy is the quiet fantasy of a planet relieved of its makers. It is the imagined scent of damp earth reclaiming concrete, the visual quiet of vines slowly pulling apart steel, and the warmth of a sunbeam falling on an empty park bench long after the last picnic—a final, melancholic sigh for a silence not of peace, but of pure vacancy.
Etymology
From dis- (prefix meaning ‘against; not’) + -anthropy (suffix meaning ‘humanity’), modelled after misanthropy. The word was coined by the Canadian literary critic Greg Garrard in a 2012 article published in SubStance: see the quotation.
noun
- A misanthropic desire for a world without human life, expressed in literature.“[pages 40–41] D. H. Lawrence, enthused and infuriated by [Friedrich] Nietzsche, entrusted to his alter ego Birkin in Women in Love a desire that I will call "disanthropy": […] Lawrence may have yearned for a world without people, but it was Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse that first explored disanthropy as a formal problem. […] [page 44] Alongside the varied disanthropies of Michael Snow, Werne”