Definition of dissenter in English:

noun

• 1A person who dissents.

  Example sentences

  • ‘This would have encouraged dissenters to feel they are part of a national family, rather than outcasts only fit for punishment.’
  • ‘Harlan was the lone dissenter in the Civil Rights Cases, and though he dissented in Lochner, he also either wrote or joined some of the most significant liberty of contract cases.’
  • ‘Nothing, of course, justifies physical attacks on dissenters, but one does wonder whether some provocation was not involved.’
  • ‘In such instances, dissenters have a chance to go beyond a statement of what they, in theory, would do on an issue.’
  • ‘This was Kant's judicious way of amending Rousseau's notorious maxim, that, in a state founded on the social contract, the dissenter must be forced to be free.’
  • ‘Without the change, dissenters could argue that, given the Senate numbers, compromise was essential.’
  • ‘In public debate the loud dissenters are steeped in the liberal creed.’
  • ‘All dissenters have been systematically and ruthlessly eliminated.’
  • ‘The four dissenters responded with several options they considered workable.’
  • ‘These views were common on the left, despite some dissenters, and to a considerable extent they still are.’
  • ‘Some of the dissenters, provoked by the police use of tear gas against them, responded by torching Gabriel's house.’
  • ‘The rationality of the dissenters, their credentials, was enhanced, not diminished by this kind of reaction.’
  • ‘Mr Hague took a sterner approach to dissent by moving party policy to the right and banishing dissenters from the front bench.’
  • ‘You see, it wasn't until I came out as a dissenter against certain policies of the left-wing political establishment that I learned what it is like to be on the ‘wrong side’ of an issue.’
  • ‘Powell dissents on the same grounds but he's a dissenter who should be sent packing.’
  • ‘We thank you all, everyone, even the dissenters, for being with us tonight.’
  • ‘With just a few dissenters, those at the meeting voted to send a delegation to meet with Trevor Mallard to discuss the future of the school.’
  • ‘I haven't read the case closely, but my sympathies lie towards the dissenters.’
  • ‘Successful propagandists must also discourage dissenters who might disrupt the party line.’
  • ‘After all, the First Amendment aims to protect the outsider, the dissenter, the protester: those without institutional protections.’

  Synonyms

  dissident, dissentient, objector, protester, disputant, rejectionist

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  1. 1.1British historical A member of a non-established Church; a Nonconformist.
     Example sentences

     • ‘They also committed the Church to a future Anglican toleration of Protestant dissenters.’
     • ‘A national church was to be maintained, but with freedom of worship for Protestant dissenters.’
     • ‘What to do with the growing number of dissenters, notably Quakers and Jews?’
     • ‘Here the religious divisions that plagued English society, between churchmen, Dissenters, and papists, were presented in a peculiarly acute form.’
     • ‘Baptists and other dissenters could not take the simple way out by just not drinking tea.’

     Synonyms

     nonconformist, protestant, freethinker, recusant

     View synonyms