night-watchman state
night-watchman state is the alternative form of night watchman state.
Meaning of night watchman state
Noun
night watchman state (plural night watchman states)
- Government that is limited to a bare minimum of functions, usually just military, police, and courts.
- The doctrines of conservative liberalism were propounded by the late nineteenth century's leading intellectual proponents of the night watchman state.1992, Mark A. Graber, Transforming Free Speech: The Ambiguous Legacy of Civil Libertarianism, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 18
- Synonyms:
- minarchy, minimal state
Forms of night-watchman state
| plural | night-watchman states |
|---|
Questions about night-watchman state
- What is night-watchman state the alternative form of?
- Night-watchman state is the alternative form of night watchman state.
Words near night-watchman state in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: night-watchman state (page history and authors); night watchman state (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “night-watchman state.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/night-watchman_state. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.