The Collaborative International Dictionary
Disfranchise \Dis*fran"chise\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Disfranchised; p. pr. & vb. n. Disfranchising.] [Cf. Diffranchise.] To deprive of a franchise or chartered right; to dispossess of the rights of a citizen, or of a particular privilege, as of voting, holding office, etc.
Sir William Fitzwilliam was disfranchised.
--Fabyan
(1509).
He was partially disfranchised so as to be made
incapable of taking part in public affairs.
--Thirlwall.
Wiktionary
vb. To deprive someone of some privilege, especially the right to vote; to disenfranchise.
WordNet
v. deprive of voting rights [syn: disenfranchise] [ant: enfranchise]
Usage examples of "disfranchise".
Some of the journals insist that not only the Bonapartists, but also the Legitimists and the Orleanists should be disfranchised.
The pastoralists and seminomadic tribespeople who had once driven their camels and cattle through the area had another view, but it did not appear to count for much because their lifestyles disfranchised them from the politics of a nation struggling desperately to modernize.
The systematic program that disfranchised these legal voters, directed by the offices of Florida’s Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris, was so quiet, subtle and intricate that if not for George W.
Nero had made the usual affidavit that he had acted in accordance with the laws, he went up to the treasury and amongst the names of those whom he left disfranchised he placed that of his colleague.
Nero, he said, would be disfranchised, and if there were any precedent for disfranchising the same man twice he would have inserted his name specially.
Thus, in Idaho, she has disfranchised her sister of the street, and declared all women of "lewd character" unfit to vote.
The investigation into the purged voter lists was reported in The Nation, "Florida's 'Disappeared Voters': Disfranchised by the GOP," Gregory Palast, February 5, 2001.
It still disfranchises Negroes, it bars them from gainful employment, it keeps them from decent housing, schooling, public accommodations.
If so, and you cannot trust them, the remedy is not in disfranchising the majority, but in prohibiting re-organization, and in holding the territorial people still longer under the provisional government, civil or military.
The worst of all policies is that of hanging, exiling, or disfranchising the wealthy landholders of the South, in order to bring up the poor and depressed whites, shadowed forth in the Executive proclamation of the 29th of May, 1865.
That was why he made such an overt show of disfranchising his daughters, because they were so important to him - his immortality.
The mistake of the last session was the attempt to do this very thing, by a renunciation of its power to secure political rights to any class of citizens, with the obvious purpose to allow the rebellious States to disfranchise, if they should see fit, their colored citizens.