Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A system of government in which power is divided between a central authority and constituent political units.
  • noun Advocacy of such a system of government.
  • noun The doctrine of the Federalist Party.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The doctrine or system of federation or federal union in government; the principle of assigning to the care of a central government such matters of common concernment as may be agreed upon, and all others to that of the governments of the federated states, provinces, or tribes; more specifically, the aggregate principles or doctrines of a federal party, as the Federalists of the United States.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The principles of Federalists or of federal union.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun System of national government in which power is divided between a central authority and a number of regions with delimited self-governing authority.
  • noun Advocacy of such a system.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the idea of a federal organization of more or less self-governing units

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

federal +‎ -ism

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