Definitions

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

  • noun A member of the left-wing majority group of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party that adopted Lenin's theses on party organization in 1903.
  • noun A member of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party that seized power in that country in November 1917.
  • noun A member of a Marxist-Leninist party or a supporter of one; a Communist.
  • noun An extreme radical.

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

  • adjective of or pertaining to Bolsheviks or bolshevism.
  • noun a member of the extreme left wing of the Social Democratic Party that seized power in Russia in 1917 after the Russian October Revolution, and advocated rule by the proletariat and state ownership of property.
  • noun same as communist, especially used of Russian communists.
  • noun anyone with communist leanings or sympathies; -- used very loosely in a derogatory sense by some people with economically conservative views.

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

  • noun A Russian communist revolutionary, member of the Bolshevik Party in the 1917 Communist Revolution of Russia.

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

  • noun emotionally charged terms used to refer to extreme radicals or revolutionaries
  • noun a Russian member of the left-wing majority group that followed Lenin and eventually became the Russian communist party
  • adjective of or relating to Bolshevism

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Russian Bol'shevik, from bol'she, comparative of bol'shoĭ, large; see bel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Russian большевик (bol’ševík), from большинство (bol’šinstvó), "majority").

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