Word.ws English Dictionary

big society

big society noun: a conservative-liberal policy advocating the strengthening of local government and communities.

Noun

big society (uncountable)

  1. (UK) A conservative-liberal policy advocating the strengthening of local government and communities.
    • David Cameron today pledged to create communities with “oomph”, as he launched the Tory vision of a “big society” that would involve a dramatic redistribution of power from “the elite in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street”.2010 July 19, Nicholas Watt, “David Cameron reveals ‘big society’ vision – and denies it is just cost cutting”, in The Guardian
    • Blue Labour thinking, here, converges seamlessly with Cameron's “big society”.2011 May 21, Ed Rooksby, “Don't underestimate toxic Blue Labour”, in The Guardian

Examples of big society in a sentence

  • Not only were charities facing “crippling spending cuts”, but the government had also lost its way without a clear narrative to deliver the big society, he said.2013 March 5, Peter Hetherington, quoting Stephen Bubb, “Is this the end of Cameron's big society?”, in The Guardian:
  • The notion of a “big society” – back in those heady days when David Cameron and Nick Clegg stood side by side in the Downing Street garden.2019 January 28, Michael Segalov, “Forget the ‘big society’. Austerity is to blame for this army of volunteers”, in The Guardian:

Forms of big society

alternative formBig Society

Origin of big society

Coined by political adviser Steve Hilton, to contrast with big government.

Questions about big society

What does big society mean?
Big society means a conservative-liberal policy advocating the strengthening of local government and communities.
How do you use big society in a sentence?
Not only were charities facing “crippling spending cuts”, but the government had also lost its way without a clear narrative to deliver the big society, he said.
What part of speech is big society?
Big society is a noun.

Words near big society in the dictionary

  1. big sixes
  2. Big Sky Country
  3. big sleep
  4. big slick
  5. big smoke
  6. big society
  7. big spender
  8. big spenders
  9. big spoon
  10. big spoons
  11. Big Spring

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: big society (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “big society.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/big_society. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.