Source : Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

-ism \-ism\ [F. -isme, or L. -ismus, Gr. ?.]
   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.