Reactionary

How to spell reactionary

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce reactionary

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reactionary mean?

1. adjectiveOpposing political or social progress, and favouring a return to a former state of affairs.
2. nounA person who opposes political or social reform and wants to restore an earlier order.

Reactionary in a sentence

• adjective

  Critics dismissed the new policy as deeply reactionary and out of step with modern life.

• noun

  The reformers branded every opponent a reactionary who feared the future.

• adjective

  The editorial accused the council of taking a reactionary stance against the housing reforms.

• noun

  As a committed reactionary, he campaigned to overturn the recent changes to the law.

Where does reactionary come from?

Language of origin: French

This word reaches back to the Latin verb agere, meaning 'to do' or 'to drive', whose past participle actus gave English the family of words around 'act' and 'action'. Adding the prefix re-, meaning 'back' or 'again', produced the idea of 'acting back', that is, responding to a force with a counter-force. The specifically political sense was coined in French as reactionnaire during the upheavals that followed the French Revolution, where it labelled those who pushed back against revolutionary reform and wanted to restore the old order. English borrowed the term in the early nineteenth century, keeping the sense of someone who reacts against progress rather than welcoming it. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: the 'tion' sounds like 'shun', and the ending is '-ary' (relating to), not the '-ery' that catches many writers out.

How the word is built

• re- (back, again)
• act (from Latin agere: to do, drive)
• -ion (noun-forming)
• -ary (relating to)