a. and sb. [f. SOCIET-Y, after other words in -arian. Cf. F. sociétaire.]
A. adj. Societary; socialistic.
1822. Lamb, Elia, I. Compl. Decay of Beggars. The all-sweeping besom of societarian reformation. Ibid. The … caprice of any fellow-creature, or set of fellow-creatures, parochial or societarian.
a. 1849. H. Coleridge, Ess. (1851), II. 19. He [Milton] could have no sympathy with utilitarian liberaux or societarian philanthropists.
1900. H. W. Blunt, in Speaker, 3 Feb., 476/2. The return to Greek societarian ideas is now a commonplace—thanks to Ruskin.
B. sb. 1. One who believes in or advocates some form of socialism; a socialist.
1842. Nonconformist, II. 7 Dec., 809/1. And your communitarians, or societarians of modern days, who seem intent upon fashioning a new moral world by getting rid of all individuality of feeling.
a. 1866. J. Grote, Exam. Utilit. Philos., iv. (1870), 62. I should myself be inclined rather to call Mr Mill a societarian, if we must have new and sectarian words, than an utilitarian.
2. One who moves in or is a member of fashionable society.
1891. Boston (Mass.) Jrnl., 2 Jan., 2/3. ‘Societarians’ is a new term for the fashionable four hundred.
1893. ‘H. S. Merriman,’ in Cornhill Mag., Sept., 246. Second to none in that varied knowledge required nowadays of the successful societarian.
Hence Societarianism.
a. 1866. J. Grote, Exam. Utilit. Philos., iv. (1870), 71. What I have called his [Mill’s] ‘societarianism’ would have been superfluous.
