Dada or dadaism, taken from the French word for hobby-horse, was a nihilistic movement in the arts that spread primarily throughout France, Switzerland, and Germany, and the United States between 1916 and 1920. It was founded on principles of anarchy, intentional irrationality, cynicism, and the rejection of social organization.
 
The origin of the name, like the movement itself, lacks any formal logic. The most widely accepted theory is that, at a meeting in 1916 at the Café Voltaire in Zurich, a group of young artists and war resisters inserted a letter opener into a French–German dictionary. The letter opener pointed to the word dada.

The basis of the movement was more substantive than the origin of its name. It was founded as a protest against bourgeois values and as a direct result of mounting sentiments of despair about World War I. One of the chief ambitions of the movement was to discover authentic reality by abolishing traditional culture and values. Comprised of painters, writers, dancers, and musicians, the dadaists were often involved in several art forms simultaneously and sought to break down the boundaries that kept individual art forms distinct. The dadaists did not only want to create art; they wanted to promote revolutionary changes. They were not interested in public admiration but sought to provoke the public into action. To the dadaists, a violently negative reaction was beter than a passive acceptance.

Although as a movement dadaism concerned all forms of the arts, including visual and performance modes, in France it was predominately literary in emphasis, taking the lead from one of its founders, the poet Tristan TZARA. The most noted French publication was the journal Littérature, which was published from 1919 to 1924 and contained works by André BRETON, Louis ARAGON, Philippe Soupault (1897–?), and Paul ÉLUARD. The dada movement began to decline in 1922 as many of its proponents began to develop an interest in surrealism.s