Definition of "anomie" []

• Social instability caused by erosion of standards and values. (noun)
• Alienation and purposelessness experienced by a person or a class as a result of a lack of standards, values, or ideals: "We must now brace ourselves for disquisitions on peer pressure, adolescent anomie and rage” ( Charles Krauthammer). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "But in sociology, we use the term anomie, the sense of normlessness that comes just like the spiraling down."
• "When it came to alienation, or what he preferred to call anomie, Durkheim was convinced that such shiftlessness—moral isolation, in effect—was caused by an absence of conventions and a rejection of the society that instituted them."
• "This unnatural, inorganic, materialistic way of living, coupled with a marked decline in society's moral and ethical standards -- what the French call anomie -- has created a kind of pathology that produces pain and emptiness, for which addictive behavior becomes the primary symptom and consumption the preferred drug of choice."