lunatic fringe

American  

noun

1. members on the periphery of any group, especially political, social, or religious, who hold extreme or fanatical views.

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lunatic fringe British  

noun

1. the members of a society or group who adopt or support views regarded as extreme or fanatical

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lunatic fringe Cultural  

1. Derogatory name for the extreme radical members of a group, especially in politics: “The candidate referred to the organization as being on the lunatic fringe of conservatism.” The term was coined by Theodore Roosevelt.

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Etymology

Origin of lunatic fringe

An Americanism dating back to 1910–15

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

lunatic fringe

Because of that, “no matter how much McCarthy bent over backwards to accommodate a lunatic fringe, there’s going to be someone who didn’t like him,” Ornstein said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 14, 2023

All that can be dismissed as the ravings of the lunatic fringe, but it is being taken seriously in Jordan and Egypt.

From BBC ● Nov. 13, 2023

Now maybe all this is just the lunatic fringe acting out and nothing will come of it.

From Salon ● Oct. 4, 2021

Unfortunately for the lunatic fringe, however, those events were just horse races:

From Slate ● Jun. 7, 2018

Transcendentalism, like all idealistic movements, had its "lunatic fringe," its camp-followers of excitable, unstable visionaries.

From The American Spirit in Literature : a chronicle of great interpreters by Bliss Perry