revolutionary Hear it!

revolutionary Definition

revo·lu·tion·ary (-s̸hə ner′ē)

adjective

  1. of, characterized by, favoring, or causing a revolution in a government or social system
  2. bringing about or constituting a great or radical change a revolutionary design
  3. ☆ of or having to do with the American Revolution
  4. revolving or rotating

noun pl. -·ar′·ies

a person who favors or takes part in a revolution

revolutionary Synonyms

revolutionary

modif.

  1. Concerned with a revolution

    rebellious, revolting, mutinous, insurrectionary, insurgent, destructive, anarchistic, radical, extremist, reformist, subversive, subverting, overturning, upsetting, destroying, cataclysmic, sweeping, convulsive, seceding, riotous, agitating, disturbing, working underground, working beneath the surface, seditious, factious, treasonable, traitorous.

    Antonyms patriotic*, loyal*, moderate. *

  2. New and unusual

    unprecedented, novel, advanced, innovative; see unusual 2.

revolutionary Synonyms

revolutionary

n.

revolutionist, insurgent, insurrectionist; see rebel 1, resister.

revolutionary Usage Examples

Converse of object

  • exile: Marx and Engels, along with many other exiled revolutionaries, decided to return to Germany once the revolution had broken out.
  • leave: Certainly the participation of most of the revolutionary left in a united campaign has been an important precondition of success.

Adjective modifier

  • proletarian: But let the Belgian comrades name just one Bolshevik-Leninist comrade or one proletarian revolutionary who has been expelled from the Hotel Falcón!
  • bourgeois: For the bourgeois revolutionaries, media freedom had been founded upon the absence of state controls and the private ownership of printing presses.
  • Russian: The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky developed the theory of permanent revolution.
  • socialist: The Socialist revolutionaries, who had been freed from imprisonment, gave themselves up in fear of reprisals.
  • communist: It was the communist revolutionaries such as Che Guevara, Fidel and Raul Castro who understood there can be no compromise with imperialism.
  • French: MacDougall doesn't share Walter Scott's fear of the French revolutionaries.

Modifies a noun

  • proletariat: If the revolutionary proletariat does not take power, Fascism will inevitably take it!
  • struggle: Indeed the winning of reforms is very often the product of militant revolutionary struggle.
  • socialist: What is less well known is that she was a revolutionary socialist.
  • defeatism: Already in 1937, even before the war, Stinas held that the position of revolutionary defeatism also applied to the Soviet Union.
  • Marxism: Why should not prankish history provide revolutionary bourgeois democracy with a leader from the school of orthodox, revolutionary Marxism?
  • movement: We pay homage to the courage of the leaders of the first national revolutionary movement in Britain.

Modifying Another Word

  • potentially: Issue 2- were the Kiel mutinies a potentially revolutionary threat?
  • truly: From the depths of the masses come vibrant echoes to every bold word, every truly revolutionary slogan.
  • hardly: New models may update a small feature but are hardly revolutionary.
  • quite: I point out that this was a quite revolutionary declaration for him to make.

Noun used with modifier

  • nothing: Nothing revolutionary, just the regular evolution that has seen the company good for a hundred years.
  • anything: We don't claim that we are doing anything revolutionary with our music.