Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The state or quality of being liberal.
- n. A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority.
- n. The tenets or policies of a Liberal party.
- n. An economic theory in favor of laissez-faire, the free market, and the gold standard.
- n. A 19th-century Protestant movement that favored free intellectual inquiry, stressed the ethical and humanitarian content of Christianity, and de-emphasized dogmatic theology.
- n. A 19th-century Roman Catholic movement that favored political democracy and ecclesiastical reform but was theologically orthodox.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Liberal principles; the principles or practice of liberals; freedom from narrowness or bigotry, especially in matters of religion or politics.
- n. Specifically, the political principles of a Liberal party.
Wiktionary
- n. The quality of being liberal.
- n. Any political movement founded on the autonomy and personal freedom of the individual, progress and reform, and government by law with the consent of the governed.
- n. An economic theory in favour of laissez faire and the free market.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Liberal principles; the principles and methods of the liberals in politics or religion; specifically, the principles of the Liberal party.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an economic theory advocating free competition and a self-regulating market
- n. a political orientation that favors social progress by reform and by changing laws rather than by revolution
Etymologies
- Circa 1819, from French libéralisme circa 1818 (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The danger of decay in liberalism is greatest when the response of the liberal to the issues of the day is so automatic that it is predictable.”
Waldo Jaquith - “Browbeaten By Humpty Dumpty, Or Quitting the Liberal Label”
“There was this pretense to liberalism, I mean even in '38 when the people went to the Southern Conference they were able to draw a crowd of fifteen hundred people there and use the term liberalism in a fairly non-threatening way.”
“In general the term liberalism has been debated and critiqued hundreds of times, but generally from the left.”
“When I began my life in politics, those values went by the name liberalism.”
“Or the implication that her liberalism is a negative?”
“However what you call liberalism is no that at all.”
“Rather, as I will try to show, many of the ideas and impulses that inform what we call liberalism come to us through an intellectual tradition that led directly to fascism.”
“The fact that it now sounds odd, and it does to me and I think of myself as a thoroughly social liberal, is an indication that any change in "liberalism" towards a minimalist state position has been in recent decades, rather than as the re-writers like to allege, that "social liberals" are recent usurpers in some long history of liberalism meaning what they would like it to mean.”
“But when you discuss schools, bussing, tent city, infrastructure, and auditing with them, you quickly realize that their 'liberalism' is a lot more focused on issues that _should_ be irrelevant in a city election: gay rights, whales, abortion, repeat the third thing, etc.”
“His "liberalism" is not instinctive; he started out as an Owenite SDP councillor.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘liberalism’.
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EN - academic vocabulary
Use these and get promoted
abandon, abandonment, abnormally, abstract, abstraction, abstractly, abstracts, academia, academic, academically, academics, academies and 3119 more...
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Romanticism
Words to describe art of the Romantic Era
contorted, confusing, rebellious, puzzling, passion, bizarre, tortured, bruisy, emotion, brooding, dark, fantasy and 91 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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-ism's -logies
acosmism, absurdism, absolutism, ableism, aestheticism, alarmism, allotheism, anachronism, animalculism, analogism, animatism, animism and 464 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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-isms
fascism, anarchism, satanism, racism, racialism, nordicism, nazism, socialism, catholicism, national socialism, paganism, hinduism and 67 more...
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Things I adore
words, linguistics, etymology, philosophy, literature, research, poetry, science, cognition, solitude, nihilism, zen and 139 more...
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nfk9595's Words
magnetohydrodynamics, bovine, epistle, gargantuan, kerfuffle, verbiage, morose, coup de main, elan, achtung, uber, verboten and 497 more...
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Ed Research Theories & Paradigms
Theories and paradigms to know in the field of educational research.
positivism, postmodernism, historical functi..., poststructuralism, modernism, deconstruction, phenomenology, neoliberalism, Marxism, structural functi..., colonialism, postcolonialism and 4 more...
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List of ISMs
theism, monotheism, premillennialism, postmillennialism, millennialism, calvinism, arminianism, skepticism, reductionism, mysticism, pantheism, rationalism and 48 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for liberalism.
reesetee Singlepayernow, those definitions are from WordNet--they tend to be a little screwy. Doesn't mean everyone thinks they're correct. See WeirdNet. :-) Dec 9, 2007
chained_bear Good point, kewpid. Or, perhaps what it aspires to is just reform of existing conditions and institutions to reach some (perhaps unspoken or undefined) more progressive state of affairs. Dec 9, 2007
kewpid Liberalism is governed by fundamental rules and beliefs, so I guess what it ultimately aspires to achieve is in a way (little-r) revolutionary. Dec 9, 2007
singlepayernow is that right? not by revolution, huh? kinda like incrementalism i suppose. as opposed to being binary, throwing out all that is old and wrong and start anew with what is "right" or "correct". Dec 9, 2007