Crossword clues for suffrage
suffrage
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Suffrage \Suf"frage\, v. t.
To vote for; to elect. [Obs.]
--Milton.
Suffrage \Suf"frage\, n. [F., fr. L. suffragium; perhaps originally, a broken piece, a potsherd, used in voting, and fr. sub under + the root of frangere to break. See Break.]
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A vote given in deciding a controverted question, or in the choice of a man for an office or trust; the formal expression of an opinion; assent; vote.
I ask your voices and your suffrages.
--Shak. -
Testimony; attestation; witness; approval.
Lactantius and St. Austin confirm by their suffrage the observation made by heathen writers.
--Atterbury.Every miracle is the suffrage of Heaven to the truth of a doctrine.
--South. -
(Eccl.)
A short petition, as those after the creed in matins and evensong.
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A prayer in general, as one offered for the faithful departed.
--Shipley.I firmly believe that there is a purgatory, and that the souls therein detained are helped by the suffrages of the faithful.
--Creed of Pope Pius IV.
Aid; assistance. [A Latinism] [Obs.]
The right to vote; franchise.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 14c., "intercessory prayers or pleas on behalf of another," from Old French sofrage "plea, intercession" (13c.) and directly from Medieval Latin suffragium, from Latin suffragium "support, ballot, vote; right of voting; a voting tablet," from suffragari "lend support, vote for someone," conjectured to be a compound of sub "under" (see sub-) + fragor "crash, din, shouts (as of approval)," related to frangere "to break" (see fraction). On another theory (Watkins, etc.) the second element is frangere itself and the notion is "use a broken piece of tile as a ballot" (compare ostracism). Meaning "a vote for or against anything" is from 1530s. The meaning "political right to vote" in English is first found in the U.S. Constitution, 1787.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context uncountable English) The right or chance to vote, express an opinion, or participate in a decision. 2 (context countable English) A vote in deciding a particular question. 3 The right to vote for elected officials in a representative democracy. 4 (context US English) The right of women to vote. 5 (context countable Christianity English) A prayer, for example a prayer offered for the faithful dead. 6 (context countable Christianity English) A short petition, as those after the creed in matins and evensong. 7 (context uncountable English) aid, intercession. 8 Testimony; attestation; witness; approval.
WordNet
n. a legal right guaranteed by the 15th amendment to the US constitution; guaranteed to women by the 19th amendment; "American women got the vote in 1920" [syn: right to vote, vote]
Wikipedia
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). The right to run for office is sometimes called candidate eligibility, and the combination of both rights is sometimes called full suffrage. In many languages, the right to vote is called the active right to vote and the right to run for office is called the passive right to vote. In English, these are sometimes called active suffrage and passive suffrage.
Suffrage is often conceived in terms of elections for representatives. However, suffrage applies equally to referenda and initiatives. Suffrage describes not only the legal right to vote, but also the practical question of whether a question will be put to a vote. The utility of suffrage is reduced when important questions are decided unilaterally by elected or non-elected representatives.
In most democracies, eligible voters can vote in elections of representatives. Voting on issues by referendum may also be available. For example, in Switzerland this is permitted at all levels of government. In the United States, some states such as California and Washington have exercised their shared sovereignty to offer citizens the opportunity to write, propose, and vote on referendums and initiatives; other states have not. The United States federal government does not offer any initiatives at all.
Suffrage is granted to qualifying citizens once they have reached the voting age. What constitutes a qualifying citizen depends on the government's decision, but most democracies no longer extend differing rights to vote on the basis of sex or race. Resident non-citizens can vote in some countries, which may be restricted to citizens of closely linked countries (e.g., Commonwealth citizens and European Union citizens).
Usage examples of "suffrage".
In those documents we find the abridgment of the existing right of suffrage and the denial to the people of all right to participate in the selection of public officers except the legislative boldly advocated, with labored arguments to prove that large control of the people in government is the source of all political evil.
In those documents we find the abridgment of the existing right of suffrage, and the denial to the people of all right to participate in the selection of public officers, except the legislature, boldly advocated, with labored argument to prove that large control of the people in government is the source of all political evil.
His lordship adduced examples from history, to show that the principle of change had been often acknowledged, and the suffrage withdrawn and conferred on various occasions.
Pendleton on an extreme Democratic platform, to go to the other extreme and take Chief Justice Chase on a platform of amnesty and suffrage.
I have not set down too many dates, for the setting down of dates in much profusion is, after all, an ad captandum appeal to the suffrages of those soft-headed creatures who are styled serious men.
Only a minority of Republicans were ready to demand suffrage for those who had been recently emancipated, and who, from the ignorance peculiar to servitude, were presumably unfit to be intrusted with the elective franchise.
As an illustration of the rapidity of changes in elective officers where suffrage is absolutely free, each succeeding House in the ten Congresses, with a single exception, contained a majority of new members.
The contentions which have arisen between political parties as to the rights of negro suffrage in the Southern States, would scarcely be cognizable judicially under either the Fourteenth or the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
To Lilburne the one guarantee for good government was in the supremacy of a Parliament elected by manhood suffrage.
Although other interpretive decisions of federal courts are unavailable, many State courts, taking their cue from pronouncements of the Supreme Court as to the operative effect of the similarly phrased Fifteenth Amendment, have proclaimed that the Nineteenth Amendment did not confer upon women the right to vote but only prohibits discrimination against them in the drafting and administration of laws relating to suffrage qualifications and the conduct of elections.
A suffrage committee, having no political authority, drew up and presented a new constitution of government to the people, plead a plebiscitum in its favor, and claimed the officers elected under it as the legally elected officers of the state.
If it stood by itself, I could not, with my notions of the possibility and practicability of establishing civil governments in the South, based upon loyal suffrage, vote for this bill.
Ostensibly democratic, in that elections were a large feature of it, it was timocratic in that suffrage was not equal between all voters.
Not until 1869, however, when Wyoming, as a territory, accorded women suffrage on terms of equality with men and continued to grant such privileges after its admission as a State in 1890, did these advocates register a notable victory.
Omar himself confessed from the pulpit, that if any Mussulman should hereafter presume to anticipate the suffrage of his brethren, both the elector and the elected would be worthy of death.