equalitarian

English

Etymology

Coined around 1800 from equality +‎ -arian.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

equalitarian (comparative more equalitarian, superlative most equalitarian)

1. (dated) Characterized by social equality and equal rights for all people.

   Synonym: egalitarian

   • 1936, A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, Harvard University Press, page 205:

     There was more than one way, however, in which the principles embodied in the cosmological conception of the Chain of Being could be used as weapons against social discontent and especially against all equalitarian movements.

   • 1938 April, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Homage to Catalonia, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC:

     Later it became the fashion to decry the militias, and therefore to pretend that the faults which were due to lack of training and weapons were the result of the equalitarian system. Actually, a newly raised draft of militia was an undisciplined mob not because the officers called the privates 'Comrade' but because raw troops are always an undisciplined mob.

   • 1957 October 21, “The Queen's Husband”, in Time:

     In the increasingly equalitarian Britain of the postwar years, Britain's monarchy found itself subject to a questioning, scarcely articulated, of the utility of an expensive royal household.

   • 1974 April 27, Joel Starkey, “Reactions”, in Gay Community News, page 5:

     I keep using the term monogamus ^[sic] as opposed to "marriage" because I feel that the marital institution is anti-gay in that it is not equalitarian as it now exists for heterosexuals...so it could not conceivably by equalitarian for us gay people.

Derived terms

• equalitarianism

Translations

egalitarian — see egalitarian

Noun

equalitarian (plural equalitarians)

1. (dated) A person who accepts or promotes the view of equalitarianism.

   Synonym: egalitarian

References

• “equalitarian”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “equalitarian”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• "equalitarian" in the Wordsmyth Dictionary-Thesaurus (Wordsmyth, 2002)
• Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989)