equalitarian en · ADJ
Pronunciation
- (UK) audio
- /ɪˈkwɒl.ɪˈtɛəɹi.ən/ (Received-Pronunciation)
- /ɪˈkwɑ.lɪˈtɛɹi.ən/ (General-American)
Etymology
Coined around 1800 from equality + -arian.
Meanings
-
Characterized by social equality and equal rights for all people.
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.
1938 April, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Homage to Catalonia, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC: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.
1936, A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, Harvard University Press, page 205: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.
1974 April 27, Joel Starkey, “Reactions”, in Gay Community News, page 5: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.
1957 October 21, “The Queen's Husband”, in Time:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| more equalitarian | Degree=Cmp | lexicographic | |
| most equalitarian | Degree=Sup | lexicographic |
Deriveds
antiequalitarian · inequalitarian · nonequalitarian · pseudoequalitarian · equalitarianism