proprietarian

English

Etymology 1

proprietary +‎ -an (or + -ian).

Noun

proprietarian (plural proprietarians)

1. (historical) A proponent of proprietarianism, that is, of proprietary colonies and proprietary government in colonial America.
   • 1854, John Adams, Charles Francis Adams, Works: with a life of the author, page 411:

     The quakers and proprietarians together have little weight. New Jersey shows a noble ardor. Is there any thing in the air or soil of New York unfriendly to the spirit of liberty?

   • 2008, J. A. Leo Lemay, The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 3: Soldier, Scientist, and Politician, 1748-1757, University of Pennsylvania Press, →ISBN, page 536:

     When Richard Peters reported to Penn on 2 October that the proprietarians had lost the election, he did not mention Franklin's supposed betrayal of Allen, Hamilton, and Chew.

   • 2012, Simon Finger, The Contagious City: the politics of public health in early Philadelphia, Cornell University Press, →ISBN, page 50:

     Although the proprietarians lost seats, the 1742 election opened a season of political détente between the warring factions. The governor finally got his lazaretto, and legislators even compromised on compensating Thomas Graeme, ...

2. (China) A person who owns property (a proprietor) or believes in proprietarianism, that is, that property is an absolute right.
   • 1974, Free China Review:

     The poor have been classified as the proletarians and the rich as the proprietarians on the Chinese mainland. In the Communist view all proletarians are good men and all proprietarians are bad men.

   • 2017, Xu Xue Chun, Century Sentence: A Diary Written to God Accusing Against All of the World, →ISBN:

     This is because in the capitalist nations, most people are wealthy and are proprietarians; therefore, their social culture and social logic are established on the basis of the wealthy.

Etymology 2

propriety +‎ -arian

Noun

proprietarian (plural proprietarians)

1. (rare) A stickler for proprieties.
   • 1883, William Dean Howells, Venetian Life, Leipzig: B. Tauschnitz, page 331:

     The conversazioni are of all sorts, from the conversazioni of the rigid proprietarians, where people sit down to a kind of hopeless whist, at a soldo the point, and say nothing, to the conversazioni of the demimonde where they say any thing.

   • 1977, Eva Malott, Ada McPhilliamy, Dick Pence, Digging our roots, page 158:

     We could do just about as we very well pleased, so long as we did not hurt ourselves or others, and so long as we understood right from wrong. Indeed, we were disciplined by proprietarians.

See also

• propertarian