-ism (?). [F. -isme, or L. -ismus, Gr. -ισμος.]
A suffix indicating an act, a process, the result of an act or a process, a state; also, a characteristic (as a theory, doctrine, idiom, etc.); as, baptism, galvanism, organism, hypnotism, socialism, sensualism, Anglicism.
© Webster 1913.