monotonist

English

Etymology

From monotony +‎ -ist.

Noun

monotonist (plural monotonists)

1. One who talks in the same strain or on the same subject until weariness is produced.
   • 1748, [Samuel Richardson], Clarissa. Or, The History of a Young Lady: […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to VII), London: […] S[amuel] Richardson;  […], →OCLC:

     If I ruin such a virtue, sayest thou!—Eternal monotonist!—Again; the most immaculate virtue may be ruined by men who have no regard to their honour, and who make a jest of the most solemn oaths, &c. What must be the virtue that will be ruined without oaths?

   • 1786, Louis-Sébastien Mercier, The Nightcap: In Two Volumes - Volume 1, page 173:

     and those who will be honest enough will own, as I imagine, the Homer has few beauties; his slumbers long and fequent, and notwithstanding his fifteen hundred commentators and translators, he is a monotonist, verbose, and a surfeiting describer.

   • 1795, Anna Maria Mackenzie, Mysteries elucidated, page 118:

     Happy to escape the formal monotonist, she thanked the Countess with a grateful tear, and reluctantly leaving her to the tedious repetition of dull apothegms and grave declamations, felt a transient relief in the liberty of reflection, […]

2. (art) One whose work is monochromatic or characterized by sameness.
   • 1817, Daniel Staniford, The Art of Reading, page 211:

     If read with propriety, it will soon correct the monotonist of that sameness of tone, which so disgusts in most common readers, and with which no person can ever reasonably expect to give pleasure to those who are so unfortunate as to be his hearers ,

   • 1885, John Todhunter, Helena in Troas, page 73:

     I could chide thee now As vexed Apollo some monotonist That will but finger in one mode alone, And learn no other.

   • 1903, Testimonies and Criticisms Relating to the Life and Works of John Milton, page 189:

     Milton's management of his angels and evils proves as much as anything in the poem the versatility of his genious, the delicacy of his discrimination of character, that Shakespearean quality in him which has been so much over-looked. […] No mere monotonist could have succeeded in it .

   • 2022, John Daniel Logan, Donald G. French, Highways of Canadian Literature:

     In these first lyrics he disclosed the eye of monotonist and etcher for the beauty of Nature.

3. (archaic) A woman who is focussed solely on her role as wife and mother; a tradwife.
   • 1871, Charlotte Louisa Hawkins Dempster, Véra, page 168:

     I don't wish to run my head up against a stone wall. I mean to turn into a British 'monotonist;' and after Parliament meets I can go up to London.

   • 2002, J. Lilly, The Last Carnival, page 277:

     No dying in debt at home in a bed that would wind up in a high-tourist attraction, just because one was a monotonist didn't mean everything always had to be The Same, The Same, The Same...

   • 2020, Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue, page 110:

     Her thoughts were interrupted by the woman sitting across from her. "You're not a monotonist, are you? ".

4. (corporate ethics) One who believes a corporation should care only about maximizing shareholder value, and not be concerned with any other stakeholders.
   • 2012, W. Amann, A. Stachowicz-Stanusch, Integrity in Organizations, page 197:

     The monotonist perspective maintains that the purpose of the corporation is the legal, short-term maximization of shareholder wealth (Friedman 2002). From the monotonist perspective, responsible corporate board governance requires that board members eschew any extra-shareholder considerations in decision making as reflecting inapropriate social political or cultural influences, possible violations of innate property rights, or even subterfuges that would allow top managers to act in furtherance of their own interests to the detriment of aggregate investor interests.

   • 2013, Joseph A. Petrick, “Humanistic Management and North American Business Ethics”, in S. Khan, W. Amann, editor, World Humanism, page 39:

     Private benefit corporations (as opposed to B corporations — public benefit corporations) under the monotonist rubric have secured investor wealth but also have injured many stakeholders through the abusive use of power from the unlimited accumulation of financial assets without legal liability (Korten 2010; Turnbull 2002).

   • 2016, Ismail Adelopo, Auditor Independence, page 181:

     The practical implication of this for Corporate Governance is that greater presence of independent non-executive directors on the Board may mean better protection of the interests of the shareholders, if the author assumes the monotonist's view, and of all stakeholders if the author assumes the pluralist's view.

Adjective

monotonist (comparative more monotonist, superlative most monotonist)

1. Characterized by sameness; unvarying; lacking originality.
   • 2001, Jóhann Páll Árnason, Peter Murphy, Agon, Logos, Polis: The Greek Achievement and Its Aftermath, page 224:

     Egyptian architecture consequently was cold, monotonist, and insipid.

   • 2004, Albert Clarkson, Heaven Engine, page 96:

     I will say nothing more until I have heard your renditions, which are certain to lack emotion and be monotonist.

   • 2013, Michael Boylan, Environmental Ethics:

     Since the long centuries of pastoral agriculture, production has been transformed. Labor has changed from seasonal intensity, when bands of workers worked long and hard for a few months a year and sporadically and easily for most of the rest of the year, to the monotonist intensity of Taylorist production lines.

   • 2013, Giovanni Stanghellini, Thomas Fuchs, One Century of Karl Jaspers' General Psychopathology, page 146:

     Thus in view of the revered artist van Gogh he writes: ' At the 1912 exhibition in Cologne, where strangely monotonist Expressionist art from all over Europe was on view in the vicinity of the wonderful art of van Gogh, I sometimes had the feeling that he was the only truly great and unwillingly “insane” one among so many who wanted to be insane bet were really all too normal' (Jaspers 1926: 150).