liberalism

CEFRC1

/ˈlɪ.b(ə.)ɹə.lɪz.əm/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

01
noun
A political belief in freedom, equality, and limited government control.
02
noun
Extra detail
An economic ideology in favour of laissez faire and the free market (related to economic liberalism).

Examples

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Deep Dive

Extra meanings

Any political movement founded on the autonomy and personal freedom of the individual, progress and reform, and government by law with the consent of the governed.
The quality of being liberal.

In context

I do not believe in liberalism.
Whether some distant cousin really belongs to the extended family of liberalisms is a matter of healthy dispute.
But liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face: ecological collapse and technological disruption.

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Question 1 · Quick check

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

The word in print, with each source given in full.

Whether some distant cousin really belongs to the extended family of liberalisms is a matter of healthy dispute.
2009 January 25, Timothy Garton Ash, “A Liberal Translation”, in The New York Times
This poses obvious problems for statistical inference in that what may appear as ‘declines’ in non-white racial liberalism may actually be due to increases in representation of non-black racial/ethnic minorities whose racial attitudes are more conservative.
2022 May 2, Zachary Goldberg, “Explaining Shifts in White Racial Liberalism: The Role of Collective Moral Emotions and Media Effects”, in Georgia State University, archived from the original on 25 Jan 2025, page 142
But liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face: ecological collapse and technological disruption.
2018, Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

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Circa 1819, from French libéralisme circa 1818. Equivalent to liberal + -ism.