Word.ws English Dictionary

fence-mending

fence-mending noun: social assistance given to a community in order to retain popularity with the electorate.

Noun

fence-mending (uncountable)

  1. Social assistance given to a community in order to retain popularity with the electorate.
    • In summary, the recognition of the mandate of a group by government is useful not only to the group's leaders but to government as well. The existence and operations of organized groups introduce an element of stability into the political process; […] they enable government to carry on a continuous...1972, David Kwavnick, Organized Labour and Pressure Politics, page 15
    • Patronage and political fence mending had come to bore him.1995, Jack Bass, The Transformation of Southern Politics, page 295
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see fence, mend.

Questions about fence-mending

What does fence-mending mean?
Fence-mending means social assistance given to a community in order to retain popularity with the electorate.
What part of speech is fence-mending?
Fence-mending is a noun.

Words near fence-mending in the dictionary

  1. fence time
  2. fence times
  3. fence viewer
  4. fence wire
  5. fence wires
  6. fence-mending
  7. fence-post
  8. fence-posts
  9. fence-sat
  10. fence-sit
  11. fence-sits

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fence-mending (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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