Crossword clues for conservative
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Conservative \Con*serv"a*tive\, n.
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One who, or that which, preserves from ruin, injury, innovation, or radical change; a preserver; a conserver.
The Holy Spirit is the great conservative of the new life.
--Jer. Taylor. One who desires to maintain existing institutions and customs; also, one who holds moderate opinions in politics; -- opposed to revolutionary or radical.
(Eng. Hist.) A member of the Conservative party.
Conservative \Con*serv"a*tive\, a. [Cf. F. conservatif.]
Having power to preserve in a safe of entire state, or from loss, waste, or injury; preservative.
Tending or disposed to maintain existing institutions; opposed to change or innovation.
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Of or pertaining to a political party which favors the conservation of existing institutions and forms of government, as the Conservative party in England; -- contradistinguished from Liberal and Radical.
We have always been conscientiously attached to what is called the Tory, and which might with more propriety be called the Conservative, party.
--Quart. Rev. (1830).Conservative system (Mech.), a material system of such a nature that after the system has undergone any series of changes, and been brought back in any manner to its original state, the whole work done by external agents on the system is equal to the whole work done by the system overcoming external forces.
--Clerk Maxwell.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 14c., conservatyf, from Middle French conservatif, from Late Latin conservativus, from Latin conservatus, past participle of conservare (see conserve).\n
\nAs a modern political tradition, conservatism traces to Edmund Burke's opposition to the French Revolution (1790), but the word conservative is not found in his writing. It was coined by his French disciples, (such as Chateaubriand, who titled his journal defending clerical and political restoration "Le Conservateur").\n
\nConservative as the name of a British political faction first appeared in an 1830 issue of the "Quarterly Review," in an unsigned article sometimes attributed to John Wilson Croker. It replaced Tory (q.v.) by 1843, reflecting both a change from the pejorative name (in use for 150 years) and repudiation of some reactionary policies. Extended to similar spirits in other parties from 1845.Strictly speaking, conservatism is not a political system, but rather a way of looking at the civil order. The conservative of Peru ... will differ greatly from those of Australia, for though they may share a preference for things established, the institutions and customs which they desire to preserve are not identical. [Russell Kirk (1918-1994)]\nPhrases such as a conservative estimate make no sense etymologically. The noun is attested from 1831, originally in the British political sense.
Wiktionary
a. 1 cautious. 2 Tending to resist change or innovation. 3 Based on pessimistic assumptions. 4 (context US economics politics social sciences English) Supporting some combination of fiscal, political or social conservatism. 5 (context US politics English) Relating to the Republican Party, regardless of its conservatism. 6 (context British politics English) Relating to the Conservative Party. 7 (context physics not comparable English) Neither creating nor destroying a given quantity. 8 Having power to preserve in a safe or entire state, or from loss, waste, or injury; preservative. n. 1 A person who favors maintenance of the status quo. 2 (context US economics English) A fiscal conservative 3 (context US politics English) A political conservative 4 (context US social sciences English) A social conservative.
WordNet
adj. resistant to change [ant: liberal]
opposed to liberal reforms
avoiding excess; "a conservative estimate" [syn: cautious]
unimaginatively conventional; "a colorful character in the buttoned-down, dull-gray world of business"- Newsweek [syn: button-down, buttoned-down]
conforming to the standards and conventions of the middle class; "a bourgeois mentality" [syn: bourgeois, materialistic]
n. a person who has conservative ideas or opinions [syn: conservativist] [ant: liberal]
Wikipedia
In linguistics, a conservative form, variety, or modality is one that has changed relatively little over its history, or which is relatively resistant to change. It is the opposite of innovative or advanced forms or varieties, which have undergone relatively larger or more recent changes.
A conservative linguistic form, such as a word, is one that remains closer to an older form from which it evolved, relative to cognate forms from the same source. For example, the Spanish word caro and the French word cher both evolved from the Latin word cārum. The Spanish word, which is more similar to the common ancestor, is more conservative than its French cognate.
A language or language variety is said to be conservative if it has fewer innovations (in other words, more conservative forms) than related varieties do. For example, Icelandic is, in spelling, more similar to Old Norse than other languages that evolved from Old Norse, including Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish, while Sardinian is regarded by many linguists to be the most conservative Romance language. Therefore, Icelandic and Sardinian are considered relatively conservative languages. Likewise, some dialects of a language may be more conservative than others. Standard varieties, for example, tend to be more conservative than non-standard varieties, since education and codification in writing tend to retard change.
Writing is generally said to be more conservative than speech. That is to say that written forms generally change more slowly than the spoken language does. This helps explain inconsistencies in writing systems such as that of English; since the spoken language has changed relatively more than the written language has, the match between spelling and pronunciation is inconsistent. (See Great Vowel Shift)
A language may be conservative in one respect while simultaneously innovative in another. Bulgarian and Macedonian, closely related Slavic languages, are innovative in the grammar of their nouns, having dropped nearly all vestiges of the complex Slavic case system; at the same time, they are highly conservative in their verbal system, which has been greatly simplified in most other Slavic languages. English, which is one of the more innovative Germanic languages in most respects (vocabulary, inflection), is nevertheless conservative in its consonant phonology, retaining sounds such as (most notably) θ and ð (th) which only remain in English and Icelandic.
Conservative languages are often thought of as being more grammatically (or at least, morphologically) complex than innovative languages. This is largely true for Indo-European languages, where the parent language had an extremely complex morphology and the dominant pattern of language change has been simplification. On the other hand, a number of Arabic varieties commonly considered innovative, such as Egyptian Arabic, have developed a complex agglutinative system of verbal morphology out of the simpler system of Classical Arabic.
Usage examples of "conservative".
Cautious, conservative by nature, Dickinson was, as Adams had noted, a distinctive figure, tall and exceptionally slender, with almost no color in his face.
There was a small number of aesthetically civilized people, but these were hopelessly conservative.
About fifty important operations are annually performed under chloroform, but the people of Akita ken are very conservative, and object to part with their limbs and to foreign drugs.
Sir Alured was asking with rapture whether the Conservative party would not come in.
The link in the minds of this conservative religious group between their pro-family, antiabortion beliefs and a hard-line strategy in the fight against terrorism may not be intellectually apparent, but is entirely culturally coherent.
Jesus on the sidelines, antigay conservatives looking for confirmation in the New Testament are stuck with St.
Even the most conservative Assyriologists had to admit that some of the newly discovered stone fragments dated back to 4000 and 3000 b.
Unlike the abortion debate, this is one battle conservatives are losing, despite all the same-sex bans passed in November 2004.
Although he had voted against Barnett, Chooky Falkner was politically conservative and like many of his men and many white Mississippians, he strongly opposed the way the federal government was handling the Meredith case.
When Lord George Bentinck first threw himself into the breach, he was influenced only by a feeling of indignation at the manner in which he thought the Conservative party had been trifled with by the government and Lord Stanley, his personal friend and political leader, deserted by a majority of the cabinet.
There was also another reason why Lord George Bentinck was unwilling to assume the post of leader of the Conservative party, and this very much influenced him.
Senator Sam Brownback, a conservative Kansas Republican, has complained about this policy, and has introduced a bill to force the administration to spend half of its malaria budget on treatment.
In spite of the cloud which that whole affair had undoubtedly cast on his earlier career, Burgo Smyth had emerged as a junior minister in the new Conservative government of 1970.
The Cairenes, or native citizens, differ from the fellahin in having a much larger mixture of Arab blood, and are at once keener witted and more conservative than the peasantry.
Japanese Congressists wearing little plastic labels, and the loud voices of Conservative Members of Parliament, draped in the Union Jack and audible above all else.