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Menshevik

/ˈmɛnʃəvɪk/noun

Menshevik is a noun meaning “A member of the gradualist or moderate wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party during the years preceding the Russian Revolution, when…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled M-E-N-S-H-E-V-I-K, and it appears about once in every 20 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of Menshevik is Mensheviks or Mensheviki.

What does Menshevik mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A member of the gradualist or moderate wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party during the years preceding the Russian Revolution, when they split with the Bolsheviks; or a member of a later independent moderate-Marxist party formed in 1917.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce Menshevik?

  • /ˈmɛnʃəvɪk/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-Menshevik.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of Menshevik

  • Mensheviks plural
  • Mensheviki plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is Menshevik?

Menshevik appears about once in every 20 million words in written English, the 136,649th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Menshevik in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense member of a minority faction of the Russian revolutionary movement:

LanguageWords
Frenchmenchevik
GermanMenschewik, Menschewikin
Portuguesemenchevique
Spanishmenchevique

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does Menshevik come from?

Borrowed from Russian меньшеви́к (menʹševík), derived from меньшинство́ (menʹšinstvó, “minority”), formed in turn from Russian ме́ньше (ménʹše), the comparative of ма́лый (mályj, “little”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).