Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- Pertaining to or resembling either Cato the censor (died 149
b. c. ) or Cato Uticensis (95-46b. c. ), Romans, both remarkable for severity of manners and morals; hence, grave; severe; inflexible.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Of, pertaining to, or resembling, the stern old Roman, Cato the Censor; severe; inflexible.
Etymologies
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Examples
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Her brother had a more catonian look; thick locks of coarse black hair kept well with his russet, sunburnt face, and his lips, if by nothing else, were swollen with large quids of tobacco.
Margaret 1851
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Next in importance come the following: a wider extent of knowledge which impresses the members of the leader's environment; a catonian strength of conviction, a force of ideas often verging on fanaticism, and which arouses the respect of the masses by its very intensity; self-sufficiency, even if accompanied by arrogant pride, so long as the leader knows how to make the crowd share his own pride in himself; in exceptional cases, finally, goodness of heart and disinterestedness, qualities which recall in the minds of the crowd the figure of Christ, and reawaken religious sentiments which are decayed but not extinct.
Political Parties; a Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy 1916
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