fellow traveler
- a person who supports or sympathizes with a political party, especially the Communist Party, but is not an enrolled member.
- anyone who, although not a member, supports or sympathizes with some organization, movement, or the like.
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Origin of fellow traveler
1605–15, for literal sense
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for fellow traveler
Contemporary Examples
Keep pumping in money while appointing some fellow-traveler bloggers to run GM?
Historical Examples
It was not this type of fellow-traveler whom he hoped to keep out.
Love Among the ChickensP. G. Wodehouse
One was my Irish fellow-traveler, the other was his daughter.
Love Among the ChickensP. G. Wodehouse
This accounted for the peculiar sentiments of my fellow-traveler!
The Land of ThorJ. Ross Browne
The fellow-traveler followed her, for nobody could see him, as he was invisible.
Rudy and BabetteHans Christian Andersen
She was my fellow-traveler in the Tiverton diligence from Exeter.
Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. I (of 2)Samuel Taylor Coleridge
fellow traveler
One who supports the aims or philosophies of a political group without joining it. A “fellow traveler” is usually one who sympathizes with communist doctrines but is not a member of the Communist party. The term was used disparagingly in the 1950s to describe people accused of being communists.
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The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.