unnationality

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From un- +‎ nationality (nationalism or patriotism).

Noun[edit]

unnationality (uncountable)

  1. A lack of national feeling and loyalty.
    • 1842, S. Wilberforce, Letter: Rev. S. Willberforce to John Wilson Croker:
      I could not find rest in the narrow views of the so-called Evangelicals, and clung to the Church of England, and so far fought them; but their hatred of the Reformation, their leaning to a visible centre of unity for the Church, the essence of Popery, their unnationality, for they can have no notion of a national life; their cramped and formal dogmatism; their fearful doctrine of sin after baptism, and many other things of the same cast, revolted me long since.
    • 1852, William Henry Stiles, Austria in 1848-49, page 227:
      "If they – the nobles," said he, "renounce narrow-heartedness, lovelessness, and unnationality; if they feel that to do justice is not a sacrifice, but the best guaranty for obtaining justice; if, then, on the peaceful path of national prosperity and constitutional development, they will carry forward the white with the wreath-of-hope-adorned banner of steady national progress; then the nation trustfully will hail them as its leaders, and will, with two-fold spirit and excitement, follow on the paths of peace those old historic names whom on the battle-field it has of yore so often followed, and will gladly illumine the glory they thus acquire with the halo that encirlces the brows of their ancesgtors. [] "
    • 1858, Jefferson Davis, quoting Caleb Cushing, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton and Company, published 1881, page 551:
      I have heard again and again, remonstrances have been addressed to me more than once, because of the condemnation which Democratic speakers so continually utter about the unnationality as well as the unconstitutionality of the Republican party.
    • 2021, John Mullan, Chris Hart, Peter Swaab, Lives of the Great Romantics, Part I, Volume 3:
      Mr Jeffrey had absolutely run-a-muck in criticism. His kreess had subbed not only Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Lamb, James Montgomery, Bowles, Moore and Byron, but (to show his unnationality and freedom from all sorts of amiable partiality) Bums and Scott.