illiberal

Speech parts

1. illiberal - Noun

2. illiberal - Adjective

3. illiberal - Adjective Satellite

Meaning

Not liberal; not free or generous; close; niggardly; mean; sordid.

Indicating a lack of breeding, culture, and the like; ignoble; rude; narrow-minded; disingenuous.

Not well authorized or elegant; as, illiberal words in Latin.

Synonyms

Antonyms

Phrases with the word

Examples

The spirit of true religion breathes gentleness and affability; it gives a native, unaffected ease to the behavior; it is social, kind, cheerful; far removed from the cloudy and illiberal disposition which clouds the brow, sharpens the temper, and dejects the spirit. Hugh Blair

I am one of those people whom the vulgar and illiberal call "Negurs."- The first part of my life was rather unlucky, as I was placed in a family who judged ignorance the best and only security for obedience. Ignatius Sancho

The two most common charges against the older fiction, that it pleased wickedly and that it taught nothing, had broken down before the discovery, except in illiberal sects, that the novel is fitted both for honest use and for pleasure. Carl Van Doren

It is an ancient belief, going back to classical antiquity, that specialization of any kind is illiberal in a freeman. A man willing to bury himself in the details of some small endeavor has been considered lost to these larger considerations which must occupy the mind of the ruler. Richard Weaver

In the field of science fiction or fantasy, morality-when it enters a book at all-is almost always either thoughtlessly liberal (you can't judge other cultures) or thoughtlessly illiberal (strong men must rule) or just plain thoughtless. Joanna Russ

One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation, but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies. Terry Eagleton

Close letter words and terms