Libertarian

How to spell libertarian

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce libertarian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does libertarian mean?

1. nounA person who believes that individuals should have maximum personal freedom and that government power should be kept to a minimum.
2. adjectiveRelating to or supporting the principle of maximum individual freedom and limited government.

Libertarian in a sentence

• noun

  As a committed libertarian, she opposed almost every new tax.

• adjective

  The magazine took a strongly libertarian line on drug policy and free speech.

• noun

  The candidate appealed to every libertarian in the district by promising fewer regulations.

• adjective

  His libertarian views made him suspicious of any expansion of police powers.

Where does libertarian come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows from the Latin liber, meaning 'free', the same root that gives English 'liberty', 'liberal', and 'liberate'. From liber the Romans built libertas, the noun for the condition of being a free person rather than a slave. English took the suffix -arian, used to label a person who holds a particular doctrine (as in 'humanitarian' or 'vegetarian'), and bolted it onto the liberty root in the middle of the eighteenth century. At first 'libertarian' described someone who believed in free will as opposed to determinism, a philosophical sense; only later, especially through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, did it settle into its modern political meaning of someone who prizes individual freedom and minimal government. The spelling trap sits in that unstressed middle, since the 'liber' part can tempt writers toward 'libber' or 'libra', when in fact the clean Latin liber (free) is preserved intact.

How the word is built

• libert- (from Latin liber: free)
• -arian (one who advocates or believes in)