Definitions

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

  • noun The theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished.
  • noun Active resistance and terrorism against the state, as used by some anarchists.
  • noun Rejection of all forms of coercive control and authority.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Confusion; disorder; anarchy.
  • noun The doctrines of the anarchists; the anarchic and socialistic scheme of society proposed by Proudhon. See anarchy, 2.

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

  • noun The doctrine or practice of anarchists.

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

  • noun The belief that proposes the absence and abolition of hierarchy and authority in most forms.
  • noun specifically , a political and philosophical belief that all forms of involuntary rule or government are undesirable or unnecessary, and that society could function without a ruler or involuntary government (a state).

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

  • noun a political theory favoring the abolition of governments

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From anarchy +‎ -ism.

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Examples

  • … 1. For the purposes of this essay, I will mostly be using the term anarchism as shorthand for individualist anarchism; since the defense of anarchism I will offer rests on individualist principles, it will not provide a cogent basis for communist, primitivist, or other non-individualist forms of anarchism.

    Rad Geek People’s Daily – 2008 – February – 13 2008

  • … 1. For the purposes of this essay, I will mostly be using the term anarchism as shorthand for individualist anarchism; since the defense of anarchism I will offer rests on individualist principles, it will not provide a cogent basis for communist, primitivist, or other non-individualist forms of anarchism.

    Liberty, Equality, Solidarity: Toward a Dialectical Anarchism 2008

  • We are not using the term anarchism as shorthand for armed activities.

    The Three Contemporary Currents among Indian Communists Abhay N 2007

  • And the word anarchism has been so stripped of substance that it has come to be equated with chaos and nihilism.

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com David Morris 2012

  • The term anarchism derives from the Greek anarchos, meaning "without rulers."

    Prison Planet.com admin 2010

  • The term anarchism derives from the Greek anarchos, meaning "without rulers."

    Prison Planet.com admin 2010

  • The term anarchism derives from the Greek anarchos, meaning "without rulers."

    Infowars admin 2010

  • Then what you call anarchism would just be what I call libertarianism except that in

    Alex Jones' Prison Planet.com 2009

  • But did these traditional anarchists actually agree with contemporary social anarchists’ interpretive claims about the meaning of the term anarchism, or the essential features of the anarchist tradition?

    Benjamin Tucker on Anarcho-Capitalism 2007

  • But did these traditional anarchists actually agree with contemporary social anarchists’ interpretive claims about the meaning of the term anarchism, or the essential features of the anarchist tradition?

    Rad Geek People’s Daily – 2007 – December – 01 2007

Comments

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  • Railroad telegraphers' shorthand notation meaning "should not be allowed". --US Railway Association, Standard Cipher Code, 1906.

    January 19, 2013