Find the word definition

Crossword clues for agitator

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
agitator
noun
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ The genuine protestors were joined by outside agitators, intent on encouraging violence.
▪ The riots were the work of political agitators.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Many of these protesters will be outside agitators, even convention delegates, from anti-abortion strongholds like Texas and Florida.
▪ Many victims of violence have been leading agitators against corruption, as well as high-profile leftist activists.
▪ One thousand state militiamen were sent to control the agitators.
▪ The convent could not hold the restless agitator.
▪ The obvious place to start was with the known agitators and trouble-makers.
▪ Trouble was something to be nipped in the bud; dangerous agitators people to be kept behind bars.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Agitator

Agitator \Ag"i*ta`tor\, n. [L.]

  1. One who agitates; one who stirs up or excites others; as, political reformers and agitators.

  2. (Eng. Hist.) One of a body of men appointed by the army, in Cromwell's time, to look after their interests; -- called also adjutators.
    --Clarendon.

  3. An implement for shaking or mixing.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
agitator

1640s, agent noun from agitate (v.); originally "elected representative of the common soldiers in Cromwell's army," who brought grievances (chiefly over lack of pay) to their officers and Parliament.\n

\nPolitical sense is first recorded 1734, and negative overtones began with its association with Irish patriots such as Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847). Historically, in American English, often with outside and referring to people who stir up a supposedly contented class or race. Latin agitator meant "a driver, a charioteer."

Wiktionary
agitator

alt. 1 One who agitates; one who stirs up or excites others; as, political reformers. 2 An implement for shaking or mixing. 3 One of a body of men appointed by the army, in Cromwell's time, to look after their interests; called also adjutators. n. 1 One who agitates; one who stirs up or excites others; as, political reformers. 2 An implement for shaking or mixing. 3 One of a body of men appointed by the army, in Cromwell's time, to look after their interests; called also adjutators.

WordNet
agitator

n. one who agitates; a political troublemaker [syn: fomenter]

Wikipedia
Agitator

An agitator is a person who actively supports some ideology or movement with speeches and especially actions. The Agitators were a political movement as well as elected representatives of soldiers, including the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell, during the English Civil War. They were also known as adjutators. Many of the ideas of the movement were later adopted by the Levellers.

Agitator (disambiguation)

An agitator is a person that actively supports some ideology or movement with speeches and especially actions.

Agitator may also refer to:

  • Agitator (device), a mechanism to put something into motion by shaking or stirring
  • Agitator (film), a 2001 Japanese film
  • Agitator (hockey), a type of ice-hockey player, also known as a pest, who specializes in annoying or distracting opposing players
  • Agitator (newspaper), a syndicalist newspaper published in Home, Washington, USA from 1910 to 1912
  • Levellers, also called Agitators, in English history, representatives for the New Model Army in the Putney Debates
Agitator (device)

An agitator is a device or mechanism to put something into motion by shaking or stirring. There are several types of agitation machines, including washing machine agitators (which rotate back and forth) and magnetic agitators (which contain a magnetic bar rotating in a magnetic field). Agitators can come in many sizes and varieties, depending on the application.

In general, agitators usually consist of an impeller and a shaft. An impeller is a rotor located within a tube or conduit attached to the shaft. It helps enhance the pressure in order for the flow of a fluid be done. Modern industrial agitators incorporate process control to maintain better control over the mixing process.

Agitator (film)

Agitator (Araburu tamashii-tachi, also known as The Outlaw Souls) is a 2001 Japanese film directed by Takashi Miike.

Agitator (newspaper)

The Agitator was a radical newspaper published by Jay Fox of the anarchist Home Colony in the American state of Washington from 1910 to 1912.

In 1913 the paper was briefly relaunched as The Syndicalist as the official organ of William Z. Foster's Syndicalist League of North America, at which time it was moved first to Lakebay, Washington and thereafter to Chicago.

The Agitator and its successor were among the most important written vehicles for anarchosyndicalist ideas in America during the decade of the 1910s.

Usage examples of "agitator".

Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induced him to desert.

I think that, in such a case, to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional, but withal a great mercy.

One Adolf Hitler was an early Party agitator, but as I recall it he intrigued against the Leader during the War of Triumph and was executed.

This the great agitator declared he would obtain by moral force only, if the people of Ireland abstained from rebellion, and preserved the moral attitude of a united demand for the repeal of the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland.

Others supposed that it would now assume a worse form, in consequence of the absence of those restraints which the superior sagacity of the arch agitator laid upon the more fiery and imprudent ringleaders.

This debate was remarkable as giving an opportunity to the great agitator for his last parliamentary effort.

The publicly expressed opinions of the agitator had been so very adverse to those conveyed in this private communication, that its perusal caused a great sensation in the house.

Whiteside was regarded as having too much of the clever, eloquent, fiery Irish agitator in his own constitution, not to have some complaisant sympathy with such qualities in his countrymen.

But it is a little silly for an agitator to cry thief when the success of his agitation has led to the adoption of his ideas.

Although it is not clear how much the highborn agitators contributed to this development, the police undertook a sweep of the Marxists, and in 1895 Lenin and Martov were arrested.

A gang of men, pretending to be agitators, bomb or burn every, factory and mine which attempts to start operations, and terrorize all men who want to go back to work.

Hardfaced men--the agitators who had been prominent in the trouble from the first--mounted soap boxes at street corners, and began to label Aunt Nora as a sinister woman, and Doc Savage a murderer and worse.

The day was marked by a dribble of bruised and battered agitators into the hospitals.

The character of this movement will more fully appear when noticing the debates in parliament which afterwards took place on the subject: it is here only necessary to say, that the ostensible and real objects of the agitators were very different.

This is the level of culture at which Sherman Anti-Trust acts are passed, brothels are raided, and labor agitators are thrown into jail.