Anomie
noun /ˈænəmi/ — A state of social disconnection — the breakdown of shared standards and belonging.
Definition
The social condition in which individual norms, values, and shared expectations have broken down — leaving people without a moral or social framework in which to locate themselves. Coined by sociologist Émile Durkheim.
Beyond the definition
Anomie is not personal failure; it is a social condition that individuals experience as personal. When the rules change faster than people can learn them, when community dissolves faster than it can reform, anomie is what remains: the vertiginous feeling of having no solid ground beneath shared life.
Origin & history
French 'anomie,' from Greek 'anomia' — 'an-' (without) + 'nomos' (law, custom). Introduced to sociology by Émile Durkheim in his 1897 study of suicide rates in modern society.
Example sentences
Illustrative sentences for learning, not verified community posts or sourced quotations.
The speed of technological change had produced a cultural anomie no one had quite planned for.
He felt anomie after the move — the social framework he'd relied on simply wasn't there.
Durkheim argued that anomie, not unhappiness, was behind the rise in modern suicide rates.
Synonyms
social disconnection, normlessness, rootlessness, alienation
Antonyms
community, belonging, social cohesion
Related words
Word in the Wild
See how this word appears in life, language and stories.
Illustrative sentences and imagined stories for learning — not verified sightings, interviews, or sourced quotations.
Fictional scene
Adult sitting in a vast room
An adult sits alone in a sparse, minimalist room with only a large window looking out toward an open landscape.
The vast, empty space represents a total breakdown of social framework, capturing the state of anomie. The person is left without a clear moral or shared context, adrift in an emptiness that defines the space and their own sense of disconnected being.
Image credit: Wordspun · AI-generated conceptual illustration