# libertarian

> English word · Noun · IPA /ˌlɪb.əˈtɛə.ɹɪ.ən/ · frequency rank #13,557

## Definitions
1. One who advocates liberty, either generally or in relation to a specific issue.
2. A believer in the freedom of thinking beings to choose their own destiny (the doctrine of free will) as opposed to those who believe the future is predetermined (the doctrine of necessity).
3. One who advocates libertarianism (“a political philosophy maintaining that all persons are the absolute owners of their own lives, and should be free to do whatever they wish with their persons or property, provided they allow others that same liberty”); also, a member of a political party supporting libertarianism.
4. One who advocates libertarianism (“a political philosophy maintaining that all persons are the absolute owners of their own lives, and should be free to do whatever they wish with their persons or property, provided they allow others that same liberty”); also, a member of a political party supporting libertarianism.
5. An Araucarian.

## Etymology
The noun is derived from liber(ty) + -arian (suffix denoting an advocate of or believer in something). The adjective is derived from the noun.
sense development
The word was first attested in English in 1789 in William Belsham’s Essays: see the quotation. This was contrasted with necessitarian, in the context of free will, and was not used in the more frequently encountered modern sense.
Compare French libertaire (“person with extreme left-wing beliefs, anarchist”), from liberté (“freedom”) + -aire (suffix forming nouns). Libertaire is derived from Latin libertas. The French word was first attested in a May 1857 letter by the French anarcho-communist Joseph Déjacque (1821–1865) to the anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), reading: “Anarchiste juste-milieu, libéral et non LIBERTAIRE [A centrist anarchist, liberal and not LIBERTARIAN] […]”. It was popularized as a euphemism for anarchiste in the 1890s, following the French lois scélérates (literally “villainous laws”) under which anarchist publications were banned.
Sense 3.2 (“believer in right-libertarianism”) developed in the United States in the 1940s and was popularized in the 1950s. In the 1940s, Leonard Read (1898–1983), the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, a free-market think tank, began calling himself “libertarian” in contrast with a “classical liberal”. In 1955, Dean Russell also promoted the use of the word, writing: “Let those of us who love liberty trade-mark and reserve for our own use the good and honorable word ‘libertarian’.”

## Easily confused with
- **librarian** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/libertarian-vs-librarian)

## Common misspellings (16)
`ilbertarian`, `lbiertarian`, `libbertarian`, `liberatrian`, `liberrtarian`, `libertairan`, `libertarain`, `libertariann`, `libertarina`, `libertarrian`, `libertraian`, `liberttarian`, `libetrarian`, `libretarian`, `liebrtarian`, `llibertarian`

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/libertarian