latitudinarian
Americanadjective
noun
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a person who is latitudinarian in opinion or conduct.
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Anglican Church. one of the churchmen in the 17th century who maintained the wisdom of the episcopal form of government and ritual but denied its divine origin and authority.
adjective
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permitting or marked by freedom of attitude or behaviour, esp in religious matters
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(sometimes capital) of or relating to a school of thought within the Church of England in the 17th century that minimized the importance of divine authority in matters of doctrine and stressed the importance of reason and personal judgment
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of latitudinarian
First recorded in 1655–65; from Latin lātitūdin- (stem of lātitūdo “breadth, width”; see latitudinal) + -arian
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Was James Madison correct that it should dispose us against a latitudinarian interpretation of Congress’s powers?
From Washington Post • Mar. 17, 2017
There are a fair number of undramatised biographical passages, which make for bumpy reading, even if one takes a latitudinarian position about the role of information in novelistic prose.
From The Guardian • Jun. 8, 2012
Armchair analysts lolled under many latitudinarian banners�Jung, Adler, Reich, Stekel, Krafft-Ebing, Sacher-Masoch and even the Marquis de Sade.
From Time Magazine Archive
The interest of it arises from its supposed parallelism to the Arminianism of Hales in the time of Charles I, and to the latitudinarian party of Whichcote and More in that of Charles II.
From History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion by Farrar, Adam Storey
Wat Gordon of Lochinvar, sometime favourite of her Grace the Duchess of Wellwood, now gardener to a latitudinarian and cavalier Galloway laird, that had been a ferlie even on a day of miracles.
From The Men of the Moss-Hags Being a history of adventure taken from the papers of William Gordon of Earlstoun in Galloway by Crockett, S. R. (Samuel Rutherford)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
