Definitions

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

  • noun One who secedes or advocates separation from a group, as from a nation or an established church.
  • noun One who advocates cultural, ethnic, or racial separation.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who withdraws or separates himself; one who favors separation. Especially
  • noun In recent British politics, an epithet applied by the Unionist party to their opponents, whom they charge with favoring the separation of Ireland from the United Kingdom.
  • Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of separatists or separatism; advocating separation: as, separatist politics; separatist candidates for Parliament; a separatist movement.

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

  • noun One who withdraws or separates himself; especially, one who withdraws from a church to which he has belonged; a seceder from an established church; a dissenter; a nonconformist; a schismatic; a sectary.

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

  • noun Someone who advocates separation from the established Church; a member of any of various sects or schismatics.
  • noun A person who advocates or seeks the splitting of one country or territory into two politically independent countries or territories.
  • adjective Advocating ecclesiastical separation.
  • adjective Advocating or seeking the separation of one country or territory into two politically independent countries or territories.

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

  • adjective having separated or advocating separation from another entity or policy or attitude
  • noun an advocate of secession or separation from a larger group (such as an established church or a national union)

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From separate +‎ -ist.

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Examples

  • Nobody in the PMO's communications office has yet answered the question why Harper has been using the term separatist when speaking of the Bloc Québecois for his anglophone audience and souverainiste when he speaks French.

    Stale, canned and indigestible. 2008

  • Nobody in the PMO's communications office has yet answered the question why Harper has been using the term separatist when speaking of the Bloc Québecois for his anglophone audience and souverainiste when he speaks French.

    Archive 2008-12-01 2008

  • The term separatist movements usually refers to social movements that aspire to autonomy for a particular group of people from a dominant political institution under which they suffer

    Charter School Appoints New Principal 2006

  • Joel Mahlangu of Mamelodi agreed, saying it was dangerous to promote what he called separatist ideology in education.

    ANC Daily News Briefing 1996

  • Kashmir never belonged to India and thus the use of the term separatist is false).

    iToot Stream 2010

  • China has been struggling for years to contain separatist sentiment among the ethnic Uighur minority in Xinjiang.

    Archive 2008-03-01 Not a sheep 2008

  • Rather than use this opportunity to fairly distribute aid to the affected population -- many of whom being among the minority Tamil population or living in Tamil separatist-controlled areas -- the majority Sinhalese-controlled government dropped the ball and focused mainly on restoring tourist areas in the country's wealthier non-Tamil areas.

    Richard Walden: The Asia Tsunami: Two Years Apres Le Deluge 2008

  • Earlier this year Pamuk told a Swiss newspaper that Turkey had killed 30,000 Kurds in separatist struggles during recent decades and a million Armenians in a genocide during World War I. Discussion of either subject is highly controversial and stringently policed in Turkey.

    Calendar 2005

  • Earlier this year Pamuk told a Swiss newspaper that Turkey had killed 30,000 Kurds in separatist struggles during recent decades and a million Armenians in a genocide during World War I. Discussion of either subject is highly controversial and stringently policed in Turkey.

    Calendar 2005

  • The true separatist is quite prepared to abandon the migrant French Canadian to absortion in the American culture that surrounds him.

    Tax! Tax! Tax!—The Canadian Tax Scene 1967

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