traditionalist
traditionalist noun: a person who adheres to tradition, especially in cultural or religious practices.
Noun
traditionalist (plural traditionalists)
- A person who adheres to tradition, especially in cultural or religious practices.
- Pullman traditionalists will no doubt maintain that the full-service-at-every-seat principle is popular with their clientele; […].1962 December, “A new Pullman era?”, in Modern Railways, page 362
- He speaks at conferences across the country and posts prolifically on social media on topics ranging from the ethics of Covid-19 vaccines (which he has questioned) to the Latin Mass favored by traditionalists (and discouraged by Pope Francis) to local conflicts between priests and bishops.2023 October 2, Ruth Graham, “‘Two Trains Charging at Each Other’: A Texas Bishop Takes On the Pope”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
- A traditional climbing climber.
Adjective
traditionalist (comparative more traditionalist, superlative most traditionalist)
- Adhering to tradition, especially in religious practices.
- The day before, Cardinal Burke and other traditionalist prelates made public an exchange of letters with Francis in which they aired grave doubts about the legitimacy of a major assembly of the world’s bishops and laypeople that will, on Wednesday, begin discussing some of the most sensitive topics...2023 October 3, Jason Horowitz, “Conservative Catholics, Relegated to Sidelines, Denounce Papal Gathering”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
Examples of traditionalist in a sentence
- The province's identity was fixed on traditionalist and historical attachment to particularist privilege.
- Traditionalists will adore the Lanesborough on Hyde Park Corner, with its stately decor, toasted teacakes and clotted cream-laden scones.
- It might attract some inner-city Catholic traditionalist Labour refugees from Labour's left, but many of those were already gentrifying.
Antonyms of traditionalist
Forms of traditionalist
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | traditionalists |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more traditionalist |
| superlative | most traditionalist |
Origin of traditionalist
From traditional + -ist.
Words formed from traditionalist
- African traditionalist
- antitraditionalist
- current-traditionalist
- neotraditionalist
- neo-traditionalist
- nontraditionalist
- paleo-traditionalist
- paleotraditionalist
- traditionalistic
- ultratraditionalist
- ultra-traditionalist
Questions about traditionalist
- What does traditionalist mean?
- Traditionalist means a person who adheres to tradition, especially in cultural or religious practices.
- What part of speech is traditionalist?
- Traditionalist can be a noun or an adjective.
- What is the plural of traditionalist?
- The plural of traditionalist is traditionalists.
Words near traditionalist in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: traditionalist (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-traditionalist.wav.
Cite this entry: “traditionalist.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/traditionalist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.