Anomie
/ˈanəmi/noun
A breakdown of shared norms in a society, leaving individuals without reliable rules or expectations.
The Greek roots
Literally: “lawlessness”
The story of the word
Émile Durkheim rebuilt the old Greek word ἀνομία in 1893 and gave it the meaning sociology still uses, then applied it to suicide rates in his 1897 study: not poverty but the collapse of expectation drives people under, which is why booms can be as deadly as busts. English had already borrowed anomy in the sixteenth century in the plain theological sense of lawlessness, and largely forgotten it. The French spelling came back with Durkheim's readers.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French sociological usage → English
- First recorded
- 1930s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
He describes the estate after the factory closed as a study in anomie.
Durkheim linked anomie to sudden prosperity as well as to ruin.