1909 as the name of a movement in arts and literature, from Italian futurismo, coined 1909 by Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944); see future + -ism. Futurist is from 1911 in the arts movement sense; attested from 1842 in a Protestant theological sense ("one who holds that nearly the whole of the Book of Revelations refers principally to events yet to come" - Century Dictionary). As "one who has (positive) feelings about the future" it is attested from 1846 but marked in dictionaries as "rare."