Word.ws English Dictionary

Butlerian jihad

Butlerian jihad noun: a war waged in the Duneverse by the last free humans against autonomous (“thinking”) machines; the Great Revolt.

Noun (1)

Butlerian jihad (plural Butlerian jihads)

  1. A war waged in the Duneverse by the last free humans against autonomous (“thinking”) machines; the Great Revolt.
    • “‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind,’” Paul quoted.
      “Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible,” she said. “But what the O.C. Bible should've said is: ‘Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.’1965 October 1, Frank Herbert, “Book I: Dune”, in Dune, Philadelphia, Pa.: Chilton Book Company; [Toronto], Ont.: Thomas Nelson & Sons, →OCLC, pages 11–12
    • At the time of the Butlerian Jihad, Omnius and his thinking machines had held all of the “Synchronized Worlds” in an iron grip for a thousand years.2003, Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, The Butlerian Jihad (Legends of Dune), London: New English Library, →ISBN, page 3
  2. (broadly, artificial intelligence) A notional large-scale and vehement opposition to and suppression of artificial intelligence.
    • Well, Daniel Kokotajlo, thank you so much. And I will see you on the front lines of the Butlerian Jihad soon enough.2025 May 15, Ross Douthat, “An Interview With the Herald of the Apocalypse”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 21 May 2025

Noun (2) capitalized: Butlerian Jihad

Butlerian Jihad (plural Butlerian Jihads)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of Butlerian jihad

Forms of Butlerian jihad

pluralButlerian jihads
alternative formButlerian Jihad
pluralButlerian Jihads

Origin of Butlerian jihad

From Butlerian + jihad (“holy war, crusade”), from the science fiction epic Dune (1965). Butlerian refers to English novelist Samuel Butler, whose 1872 work Erewhon describes a society that destroys all complex machines preemptively out of fear of their replacement by those very machines.

Questions about Butlerian jihad

What does Butlerian jihad mean?
Butlerian jihad means a war waged in the Duneverse by the last free humans against autonomous (“thinking”) machines; the Great Revolt.
What part of speech is Butlerian jihad?
Butlerian jihad is a noun.
What is the plural of Butlerian jihad?
The plural of Butlerian jihad is Butlerian jihads.

Words near Butlerian jihad in the dictionary

  1. butlerdom
  2. butlered
  3. butleress
  4. butleresses
  5. Butlerian
  6. Butlerian jihad
  7. Butlerian Jihads
  8. Butlerians
  9. butlerie
  10. butleries
  11. butlerin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Butlerian jihad (page history and authors); Butlerian Jihad (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: “Butlerian jihad.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/butlerian_jihad. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.