revanchist

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adjective

re·vanch·ist rə-ˈväⁿ-shist

: of or relating to a policy designed to recover lost territory or status : of or relating to a revanche

Each of Hitler's allies had their own, partially interrelated, expansionary or revanchist motives for attacking the Soviet Union.—

Michael Burleigh

Wilson brought with him a sheaf of high principles—democracy, self-determination, world government—that bore little relevance to the tangled politics and even more tangled geography of postwar Europe. His idealism was soon drowned out by the revanchist passions of his allies.—

Kenneth Auchincloss

also : advocating or fighting for the recovery of lost territory or status

While revanchist emperors, such as Julian, were still mouthing the aristocratic ideology of imperialist aggression, more realistic rulers, like Constantius II, recognized that the future lay in accommodation with the so-called barbarians who had already infiltrated the heights of army and administration. —

C. R. Whittaker

revanchist

2 of 2

noun

rə-ˈväⁿ-shist

plural revanchists

: one who advocates or fights for the recovery of lost territory or status : one who advocates a policy of revanche

In eastern and South-Eastern Europe today, one man's courageous defender of national self-determination is another's nostalgic revanchist.—

Tony Judt

Later in 2007, Pelosi plans to rewrite the laws on pork-barrel spending. She promises that the overall effect of her reforms will be "to break the link between lobbyists and legislation" in Washington. Who will win the coming battle between reformers and revanchists?—

Massimo Calabresi

Examples of revanchist in a Sentence

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Adjective

Subservience to revanchist powers is not an American value. —

Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 16 Oct. 2024 Trump skedaddles away from Project 2025, the revanchist right-wing playbook for a second Trump administration. —

Lorraine Ali, Los Angeles Times, 11 Sep. 2024

Noun

It is invaded by a revanchist Russia, led by a former KGB colonel. —

Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 28 Oct. 2024 In this view, Kim was not only custodian of the American polity but its inheritor, alongside the nation’s Asian, Latino, and black populace—what the white revanchists yearning for, say, the 80 percent white America of 1980, might refer to as a Great Replacement. —

Yiyun Li, Harper's Magazine, 23 Oct. 2024 See all Example Sentences for revanchist