Lit., end of the century; -- mostly used adjectively in English to signify: belonging to, or characteristic of, the close of the 19th century. At that time the phrase was also intended to imply "modern" or "up-to-date;" as, fin-de-siècle ideas.
A French term meaning "end of the century." The term is used to denote the last decade of the nineteenth century, a transition period when writers and other artists abandoned old convention s and looked for new techniques and objectives. Two writers commonly associated with the fin de siecle mindset are Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. (Compare with Aestheticism and Decadents.)