Definitions

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

  • adjective Of or pertaining to the political left or its ideology.
  • adjective Believing in or supporting tenets of the political left.

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

  • adjective politics supporting political reform to make society more egalitarian, secular, and/or democratic

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

  • adjective believing in or supporting tenets of the political left

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the seating arrangement in the French parliament after the French Revolution.

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Examples

  • He said Paul's information was based on Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government, which he called a "left-wing organization."

    www.startribune.com 2012

  • Referring to the economists' letter warning about his policy, the Chancellor said: You can always assemble a group of what the BBC themselves called left-wing academics to criticise what we are doing.

    WalesOnline - Home 2011

  • LONDON—Clifford Odets 1906-63 was a Russian-Jewish American writer best known as a left-wing playwright, but most familiar to posterity for the screenplay of "Sweet Smell of Success."

    A Slow 'Rocket' That Struggles to Take Off Paul Levy 2011

  • I am known as a left-wing sympathizer and would be proud if you were.

    A Life in Letters F. SCOTT FITZGERALD 1994

  • I am known as a left-wing sympathizer and would be proud if you were.

    A Life in Letters F. SCOTT FITZGERALD 1994

  • On President Clinton’s so-called left-wing politics: “I find my blood pressure rising when Clinton’s cultural shock troops participate in homosexual-rights fund raisers but boycott gun-rights fund raisers—and then claim it is time to place homosexual men in tents with Boy Scouts and suggest that sperm donor babies born into lesbian relationships are somehow better served.”

    Outgunned PETER HARRY BROWN DANIEL G. ABEL 2003

  • On President Clinton’s so-called left-wing politics: “I find my blood pressure rising when Clinton’s cultural shock troops participate in homosexual-rights fund raisers but boycott gun-rights fund raisers—and then claim it is time to place homosexual men in tents with Boy Scouts and suggest that sperm donor babies born into lesbian relationships are somehow better served.”

    Outgunned PETER HARRY BROWN DANIEL G. ABEL 2003

  • Indeed, one of the greatest champions of black civil rights during the 1930s and 1940s was Vito Marcantonio, the left-wing New York congressman whose East Harlem district contained large numbers of both Italians and African Americans.

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

  • Though many labor leaders were radical anticapitalists, only a tiny fraction of the rank and file was associated with a left-wing organization.

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

  • It's left-wing Westerners, not Arabs, who obsess over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Notable & Quotable 2011

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