Eleutherian

English

Etymology 1

Eleuthera +‎ -ian

Adjective

Eleutherian (comparative more Eleutherian, superlative most Eleutherian)

1. Pertaining to the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas, especially to the original settlers of the island.
   • 1807, Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Dupont De Nemours, page 112:

     Your Eleutherian son is very valuable to us & will daily become more so.

   • 1934, Hugh MacLachlan Bell, Bahamas: Isles of June, page 111:

     A naturalist would never weary in the Eleutherian scene.

   • 1975, George Hunte, The Bahamas, page 185:

     Eleutherian settlers give Harvard ten tons of braziletto wood.

   • 1997, Richard Harris, Lynn Seldon, Hidden Bahamas, page 36:

     Spanish warships burned the original Eleutherian villages to the ground in 1684, but by that time scattered settlements had appeared all along Eleuthera's coastline and neighboring cays.

   • 2018, Gabrielle F. Culmer, The Eleutherian Voyagers and Beyond, →ISBN:

     I've been familiar with the story of the Eleutherian Adventurers for several decades, since high school in Nassau, where our history teacher told us that we could be descended from these people— and some of us were.

Noun

Eleutherian (plural Eleutherians)

1. One of the original settlers of Eleuthera, who settled prior to the American Revolution.
   • 1988, Sara Whittier, Bahamas, page 195:

     The New Englanders generously sent supplies, and the Eleutherians thanked them by returning the ship loaded with hardwood.

   • 2009, A. Talbot Bethell, The Early Settlers of the Bahamas and Colonists of North America, →ISBN:

     He was one of the six Eleutherians whom Governor George Phenny had selected from among the inhabitants of the Colony as "fit persons to be recommended to His Majesty to be elected by the Public to make an Assembly, or execute other public offices under the Government."

   • 2011, Michael Craton, Gail Saunders, Islanders in the Stream: A History of the Bahamian People, →ISBN:

     Freedom of a sort the Eleutherians certainly had.

Etymology 2

From Ancient Greek Ἐλευθερία (Eleuthería, “freedom”).

Proper noun

Eleutherian

1. One of two temples on the southern slope below the Acropolis.
   • 1840, A Handbook for Travellers in the Ionian Islands:

     She was occupied in negotiating with the ambassador of Charlemagne the conditions of the great alliance between them, whereby the crowns of the East and West were to have been united on one head, when the patrician and chancellor of the empire, Nicephorus, summoned to the emperor, burst into the palace, and at first with friendly words offered to discover all the treasures of the crown, for which he promised to make over to the Eleutherian palace as a widow's residence.

   • 1890, The Nation - Volume 51, page 56:

     There are no signs of rebuilding, and yet Pausanias saw two temples, one containing the old Eleutherian image.

   • 1894, Georges Perrot, Charles Chipiez, History of Art in Primitive Greece, page 116:

     If the work cannot compare with the Hellenic masonry of the Messenian or Eleutherian walls, neither does it betray the rude power and massiveness of the Argolic acropoles.

   • 2014, Jane Ellen Harrison, Primitive Athens as Described by Thucydides, →ISBN, page 83:

     He sees within the precinct there two temples, the foundations of which remain to-day; one of them was named Eleutherian, the other we think may surely have belonged to Dionysos-in-the-Marshes

Adjective

Eleutherian (comparative more Eleutherian, superlative most Eleutherian)

1. Pertaining to Eleutheria, the personification of freedom, or Zeus Eleutheria, the protector of freedom.
   • 1789, The Analytical Review:

     He enters the ruins of a temple, sacred to Eleutherian Jove, where himself and his train are suddenly alarmed by the voice of one, who complains of the severe fate of Eretria.

   • 1836, Charles Fenno Hoffman, Lewis Gaylord Clark, Kinahan Cornwallis, The Knickerbocker: Or, New-York Monthly Magazine, page 41:

     Liberty, in these latter days, means something more than was celebrated in the Eleutherian festivals, or exemplified in the political institutions of the States of Greece, and the Commonwealth of Rome.

   • 2011, A. J. S. Spawforth, Greece and the Augustan Cultural Revolution, →ISBN, page 131:

     The Eleutherian festival was a long-established panhellenic festival, held every four years. It honoured Zeus Eleutherius, protector of the freedom (eleutheria) from barbarian dominion which the victory on this spot had secured for the Greeks of former times.

Noun

Eleutherian (plural Eleutherians)

1. One of a people of Ancient Greece, originally associated with Thebes but later granted rights with Athens.
   • 1682, George Wheler, Journey Into Greece. 6 Books with Variety of Sculptures, page 474:

     This Valley belonged in very ancient times to the Eleutherians; who being subjećt to those of Thebes, out of an inveterated hatred and emulation revolted from them and join'd themselves to the Athenians, as was pretended out of a great fancy and good affection they took to their way of Government.

   • 1991, Thomas J. Figueira, Athens and Aigina in the Age of Imperial Colonization, page 155:

     Thus, these considerations associate the citizenship of the Eleutherians with their joining the Athenians in the late sixth century, which is exactly what Pausanias tells us.

   • 1993, Martha Caroline Taylor, The Geographical Dimensions of the Polis:

     Pausanias does not specifically say that the Eleutherians received Athenian citizenship, only that they desired it; but there is nothing inherently implausible in the suggestion that the Eleutherians were made Athenian citizens

2. A member of a splinter group of puritans led by Cotton Mather.
   • 1726, Cotton Mather, Ratio Disciplina Fratrum Nov-Anglorum:

     True ELEUTHERIANS will consider, how far any further Agreement may be Necessary: And whether those unreasonable Sons of Procrustes, the Narrow-soul'd and Imperious Bigots for Uniforming, will do Religion any real Service, by the pressing of it.

   • 1846, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, page 257:

     Sept. 15. Land in Casco Bay granted to the Eleutherians.

   • 2015, Rick Kennedy, The First American Evangelical: A Short Life of Cotton Mather, →ISBN, page 82:

     Beginning in the late 1690s, Cotton became the leader — he privately wrote that he was the sole leader — of an alternative party of “Eleutherians.” This meant freemen, or libertarians, who embrace the fullness of the gospel life.