Word.ws English Dictionary

Spartist

Spartist noun: a left-winger, particularly a revolutionary but bourgeois one.

Noun

Spartist (plural Spartists)

  1. (humorous) A left-winger, particularly a revolutionary but bourgeois one.
    • ... At this party, some local Spartists differed on fundamental issues of principle, their collective consciousness heightened by quantities of drink.1982, Private Eye
    • [...] the Spartists in the new universities when they found that a non- white , a man whose tattoos could be seen so clearly , had been painted in the same classical manner as an English aristocrat.1996, New Statesman

Adjective

Spartist (comparative more Spartist, superlative most Spartist)

  1. (humorous) Far-left, particularly of a revolutionary but bourgeois nature.
    • In between putting the finishing touches to the theory of 'permanent revolution', he even manages a flirtation with the wife of a fellow guest ... and not a spartist gesture in sight.1983, The Listener
    • [...] and what a Spartist crew they are — all revolutionary clap-trap and middle class guilt.1989, Tom Milne, The Time Out Film Guide

Examples of Spartist in a sentence

  • They are Spartists, bleeding hearts , do-gooders , limousine liberals who probably live in Hampstead and care more about criminals than their victims.2000, Nick Cohen, Cruel Britannia: Reports on the Sinister and the Preposterous, Verso, →ISBN, page 102:
  • He's a political animal most thought had become extinct, a Spartist dinosaur reeking of hummus and hemp and definitely not the smoky fires of industry.2017 July 20, Stuart Maconie, Long Road from Jarrow: A journey through Britain then and now, Random House, →ISBN:

Synonyms of Spartist

Forms of Spartist

Noun
pluralSpartists
Adjective
comparativemore Spartist
superlativemost Spartist

Origin of Spartist

From Dave Spart (“stereotypical left-winger”) + -ist, itself a clipping of Spartacist (“member of the communist Spartacist League”).

Questions about Spartist

What does Spartist mean?
Spartist means a left-winger, particularly a revolutionary but bourgeois one.
How do you use Spartist in a sentence?
They are Spartists, bleeding hearts , do-gooders , limousine liberals who probably live in Hampstead and care more about criminals than their victims.
What part of speech is Spartist?
Spartist can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of Spartist?
The plural of Spartist is Spartists.

Words near Spartist in the dictionary

  1. sparticle
  2. sparticles
  3. spartina
  4. spartinas
  5. spartioidine
  6. Spartist
  7. Sparts
  8. Sparty
  9. Spartz
  10. Spartzes
  11. sparver

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Spartist (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: “Spartist.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spartist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.