revisionist

[ ri-vizh-uh-nist ]

noun

1. an advocate of revision, especially of some political or religious doctrine.
2. a reviser.
3. any advocate of doctrines, theories, or practices that depart from established authority or doctrine.

adjective

1. of or relating to revisionists or revisionism.
2. attempting to reevaluate and restate the past based on newly acquired standards.

Other Words From

• anti·re·vision·ist noun adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of revisionist¹

First recorded in 1860–65; revision + -ist

Example Sentences

All history written after the official record is set must be revisionist, redundant or some combination of the two, and revisionist history loves to restore agency to oppressed groups whose contributions went unheralded in the original accounting.

From Time

The museum would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and the project at once became a political battleground between traditionalists and revisionists.

From Washington Post

The authors don’t pursue the Osbourne angle beyond employing him as a stand-in for the revisionist school of Alamo history, which “metaphorically amounts to peeing on the Alamo legend.”

From Washington Post

From the beginning, there was a group of scholars you could call revisionists, who have this whole theory that FDR maneuvered us into war by the back door.

From Time

It’s that this draft of revisionist history has an international audience.

From Voice of San Diego

But Black certainly isn't the only Republican rape revisionist in public office.

From The Daily Beast

But, if anything, there is a bright side to this revisionist history.

From The Daily Beast

Despite its patent fallacy, the impact of the “Christian Nation” revisionist history on American attitudes is substantial.

From The Daily Beast

Instead, he condescended with a dishonest and revisionist history of the GOP.

From The Daily Beast

The film director has just co-written a revisionist history of the United States that is ideological drivel.

From The Daily Beast

On the other hand, forty-nine councils came to decisions which the revisionist party claim for themselves.

From Project Gutenberg

In the third point, M. Sorel “the revolutionary revisionist,” comes very close to M. Bernstein, “the evolutionary revisionist.”

From Project Gutenberg

It was at Dresden, 1903, that the revisionist tempest reached its height in the party teapot.

From Project Gutenberg

Khrushchev then became the object of violent attacks in the Albanian press, being castigated as more of a revisionist than Tito.

From Project Gutenberg