Reactionary (pronounced ree-ak-shuh-ner-ee)
(1) Of, pertaining to, marked by, or favoring the
politics of reaction, applied especially (if not always accurately) to extreme
conservatism or right-wing formations & individuals opposing social change
or measures labeled as progressive.
(2) An individual associated with this position.
1830–1840: From
the French réactionnaire (one in
favor of narrow conservatism or of a return to a previous social or political
state (the colloquial was abbreviation reac)). The construct was re- + -act- + -ion- + -ary. Reaction was from the Old
French reaction, from the Latin reāctiō,
from the verb reagō, the construct
being re- (again) + agō (to act).
The re- prefix was from the Middle English re-, from the circa 1200 Old French re-, from the Latin re-
& red- (back; anew; again;
against), from the primitive Indo-European wre
& wret- (again), a metathetic
alteration of wert- (to turn). It displaced the native English ed- & eft-. A hyphen is not normally
included in words formed using this prefix, except when the absence of a hyphen
would (1) make the meaning unclear, (2) when the word with which the prefix is
combined begins with a capital letter, (3) when the word with which the is
combined with begins with another “re”, (4) when the word with which the prefix
is combined with begins with “e”, (5) when the word formed is identical in form
to another word in which re- does not have any of the senses listed above. As late as the early twentieth century, the
dieresis was sometimes used instead of a hyphen (eg reemerge) but this is now
rare except when demanded for historic authenticity or if there’s an attempt
deliberately to affect the archaic. Re-
may (and has) been applied to almost any verb and previously irregular
constructions appear regularly in informal use; the exception is all forms of “be”
and the modal verbs (can, should etc).
Although it seems certain the origin of the Latin re- is the primitive
Indo-European wre & wret- (which has a parallel in Umbrian re-), beyond that it’s uncertain and
while it seems always to have conveyed the general sense of "back" or
"backwards", there were instances where the precise was unclear and
the prolific productivity in Classical Latin tended make things obscure. The Latin prefix rĕ- was from the Proto-Italic wre
(again) and had a parallel in the Umbrian re-
but the etymology was always murky. In
use, there was usually at least the hint of the sense "back" or
"backwards" but so widely was in used in Classical Latin and beyond
that the exact meaning is sometimes not clear.
Etymologists suggest the origin lies either in (1) a metathesis (the
transposition of sounds or letters in a word) of the primitive Indo-European wert- (to turn) or (2) the primitive Indo-European
ure- (back), which was related to the
Proto-Slavic rakъ (in the sense of
“looking backwards”).
Act was from the Middle English acte, from the Old French acte,
from the Latin ācta (register of
events) (plural of āctum (decree, law)),
from agere (to do, to act),
ultimately from the primitive Indo-European héǵeti and related to the German Akte (file); it partially displaced deed
(which endured in its other senses), from the Old English dǣd (act, deed). The –ion suffix was from the Middle English -ioun, from the Old French -ion, from the Latin -iō (genitive -iōnis). It was appended to a
perfect passive participle to form a noun of action or process, or the result
of an action or process. The
suffix –ary (of or pertaining to) was
a back-formation from unary and similar, from the Latin adjectival suffixes -aris and -arius; appended to many words, often nouns, to make an adjectival
form and use was not restricted to words of Latin origin. Reactionary is an adjective
& noun; the noun plural is reactionaries.
Because the jargon of political science is of little
interest to most sensible folk, it’s not surprising the word reactionary is
often misapplied, used to mean “acting in response to an external stimulus”, a
condition properly described as “reactive”.
It occurs even among those who should know better, a marker of the
decline in the quality of journalists and the extinction of the species of sub-editors
who used to correct errors prior to publication. Although not a related mistake, of note also
is the modern buzz-word “proactive” (formed by analogy with “reactive”), used
in the sense of distinguishing between prevention and cure although by overuse it’s become clichéd and seems at least superfluous given “active” would
usually do as well. It shows no sign of
going away, like that other unhappy pairing of without and within, “without”
used as an adverb or noun to mean “outside” when “within and beyond” would be
more elegant. Dictionaries of course concede
this use of “without” is both correct and enjoys a long history and none comment
on the elegance of a phrase and the two can be used in conjunction as long as
the different senses are respected. The UK
Foreign Office for example explained in a 1945 memo that “…the Soviet Government will try a policy of collaboration with ourselves
and the US (and China) within the framework of a world organization or without
it, if it fails to materialize.”
Even reactive is nuanced.
As used in science it refers usually to a relationship between two
substances, one guaranteed to produce a certain reaction if in some way
interacting with another. In general use
reactive refers to the consequences rather than the chemistry which induces the
reaction; while two chemicals can be guaranteed to be reactive upon contact, in
interactions between people, the same circumstances can sometimes produce a
reaction, in other cases there is none. To
be reactive can thus be either inevitable among substances or dependent on an
individual’s state of mine.
In political science, the term reactionary is applied
with rather more precision than in general use where, like fascist, it’s tended
to become a general term of disapprobation for those who espouse an opposing
view. When applied with some academic
rigor, it refers properly to the view that a previous political state of
society is desirable and that action should be taken to return to those arrangements. A reactionary is thus different from a
conservative who wishes to keep things as they are but perhaps (at least
sometimes) synonymous with ultra-conservative or arch-conservative, the classic
example in politics being Prince Klemens von Metternich (1773–1859; foreign
minister or chancellor of the Austrian Empire 1809-1848) who constructed an
intricate model of Europe which was design to avoid another unpleasantness (for
the ruling class) like the French revolution (1789) and its aftermath. It’s usually thought of as somewhere on the
spectrum of conservatism although there are logical (as well as linguistic) problems
with that and either in theory or historic practice, reactionary ideologies,
although radical, haven’t always been the most extreme of the breed.
In the UK there were of course already the Tories but it was the French Revolution from which English gained the descriptors "conservative", "right-wing" and "reactionary". Conservative was from the French conservateur and was applied to those deputies of the French assembly which supported the monarchy (ie they wish to conserve that which was). The term right-wing came to be used because when the Estates General was summoned in 1789, liberal deputies (the Third Estate) sat usually to left of the presiding officer's chair while the (variously usually either conservative or reactionary) members of the aristocracy (the Second Estate) sat to the right (the clerics were the First Estate and it’s from here is derived the later idea of the press as the Fourth Estate). Reactionary was from the late eighteenth century French réactionnaire (from réaction (reaction)) and was used to denote "a ideology directed to return the structure of the state and the operation of society to a previous condition of affairs". The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) dates the first use of the word in English to 1799 and political scientists have managed to coin variations like reactionist and even the (thankfully rare) reactionaryism. In theology, the classic reactionary was Pope Pius IX (Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, 1792–1878; pope 1846-1878) who in 1864 published Syllabus Errorum (Syllabus of Errors), a still controversial document which listed all the ideas of modernity which His Holiness thought most appalling and which should be abandoned because the old ways are the best. Had he lived, his Holiness would have noted with approval the entry in that manual curmudgeons, Henry Fowler's (1858–1933) A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926): "The word derives its pejorative sense from the conviction, once firmly held but now badly shaken, that all progress is necessarily good."
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