COMMUNIST

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Communist mean? 

• COMMUNIST (noun)
  The noun COMMUNIST has 2 senses:

1. a member of the communist party

2. a socialist who advocates communism

  Familiarity information: COMMUNIST used as a noun is rare.

• COMMUNIST (adjective)
  The adjective COMMUNIST has 1 sense:

1. relating to or marked by communism

  Familiarity information: COMMUNIST used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• COMMUNIST (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A member of the communist party

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("Communist" is a kind of...):

pol; political leader; politician; politico (a person active in party politics)

Holonyms ("Communist" is a member of...):

Communist Party (a political party that actively advocates a communist form of government; in Communist countries it is the sole political party of the state)

Derivation:

communism (a political theory favoring collectivism in a classless society)

communism (a form of socialism that abolishes private ownership)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A socialist who advocates communism

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

commie; communist

Hypernyms ("communist" is a kind of...):

socialist (a political advocate of socialism)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "communist"):

apparatchik (a communist who was a member of the administrative system of a communist party)

Bolshevik; Bolshevist (a Russian member of the left-wing majority group that followed Lenin and eventually became the Russian communist party)

Comrade (a fellow member of the Communist Party)

revisionist (a Communist who tries to rewrite Marxism to justify a retreat from the revolutionary position)

Instance hyponyms:

Mao; Mao Tsetung; Mao Zedong (Chinese communist leader (1893-1976))

John Reed; Reed (United States journalist who reported on the October Revolution from Petrograd in 1917; founded the Communist Labor Party in America in 1919; is buried in the Kremlin in Moscow (1887-1920))

Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili; Joseph Stalin; Stalin (Russian leader who succeeded Lenin as head of the Communist Party and created a totalitarian state by purging all opposition (1879-1953))

Chou En-lai; Zhou En-lai (Chinese revolutionary and communist leader (1898-1976))

Derivation:

communism (a political theory favoring collectivism in a classless society)

communism (a form of socialism that abolishes private ownership)

• COMMUNIST (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Relating to or marked by communism

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Synonyms:

communist; communistic

Context example:

communistic propaganda

Pertainym:

communism (a political theory favoring collectivism in a classless society)

 Context examples 

There were a dozen requests for autographs—he knew them at sight; there were professional begging letters; and there were letters from cranks, ranging from the man with a working model of perpetual motion, and the man who demonstrated that the surface of the earth was the inside of a hollow sphere, to the man seeking financial aid to purchase the Peninsula of Lower California for the purpose of communist colonization.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)