Word.ws English Dictionary

universalist

universalist adjective: universal in scope.

Adjective

universalist (comparative more universalist, superlative most universalist)

  1. Universal in scope.
    • In this connection, she notes (1984, p. 42) that in Vata (a language of the Kru family, spoken in the Ivory Coast) the normal word-order is _(VP) XP^✽ V, where XP^✽ represents one or more Complements of the head V of VP, and where V is positioned at the right periphery of V-bar. She notes that in...1988, Andrew Radford, chapter 8, in Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 404
    • In tracing the relationships between Western Modernism and the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, the curators took a universalist approach.2007 January 19, Grace Glueck, “Art in Review”, in New York Times
  2. (Germanic, US) Following a form of neopaganism, especially Germanic neopaganism, that is supportive of minorities and marginalized groups.

Noun (1)

universalist (plural universalists)

  1. A proponent of universalism.
    • The universalists place the active nodes of linguistic life—the deep structures—so deep as to defy observation and description.1992, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, New York: Bantam Books, →ISBN, page 276

Noun (2) capitalized: Universalist

Universalist (plural Universalists)

  1. A follower of Universalism
  2. (alternative) Alternative form of Unitarian Universalist

Synonyms of universalist

Antonyms

Forms of universalist

Adjective
comparativemore universalist
superlativemost universalist
Noun
pluraluniversalists
pluralUniversalists

Origin of universalist

From universal + -ist.

Words formed from universalist

Phrases with universalist

Questions about universalist

What does universalist mean?
Universalist means universal in scope.
What part of speech is universalist?
Universalist can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near universalist in the dictionary

  1. universalised
  2. universalises
  3. universalising
  4. universalism
  5. universalisms
  6. universalist
  7. Universalist Unitarian
  8. Universalist Unitarians
  9. universalistic
  10. universalists
  11. universalities

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: universalist (page history and authors); Universalist (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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