English Explanatory Dictionary

shifting baseline syndrome

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. The tendency of each generation to consider the state the environment (or by extension any other thing) was in when they grew up or first examined it to be its natural state (baseline), normalizing changes made by prior generations.

Word forms

shifting baseline syndrome shifting baseline syndromes

Etymology

Coined by scientist Daniel Pauly, in reference to generations of scientists treating the successively reduced fish populations of their own time, rather than the earliest recorded fish population levels, as the "baseline", so the "baseline" kept shifting.

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on S Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary