TORY • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Tory

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/tˈɔri/ Listen

adjective

Tory adj. Of or pertaining to the Tories.

noun

Tory n. (pl. tories)

(Eng. Politics) A member of the conservative party, as opposed to the progressive party which was formerly called the Whig, and is now called the Liberal, party; an earnest supporter of existing royal and ecclesiastical authority. Note: The word Tory first occurs in English history in 1679, during the struggle in Parliament occasioned by the introduction of the bill for the exclusion of the duke of York from the line of succession, and was applied by the advocates of the bill to its opponents as a title of obloquy or contempt. The Tories subsequently took a broader ground, and their leading principle became the maintenance of things as they were. The name, however, has for several years ceased to designate an existing party, but is rather applied to certain traditional maxims of public policy. The political successors of the Tories are now commonly known as Conservatives.

(Amer. Hist.) One who, in the time of the Revolution, favored submitting to the claims of Great Britain against the colonies; an adherent to the crown.

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Etymology of 'Tory'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tory" Quotes from Famous Books

... last self-government in essentials had been won, the old dividing lines began to melt away. All but a small knot of Tory irreconcilables now agreed that the majority must rule, and that this would neither smash the Empire nor make an end of order and justice in the province itself. But who were to unite to form that majority, and what was to be their platform? In the Reform party there had been ...

— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... Pull down with bold statesman's hand, and with like hand REBUILD, is no darling of your political Repairer. Call the party and the men by their right names: and give me for utility in legislation or administrative action an Old Tory and Obstructive party rather than ...

— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... had been bred a violent Whig, but afterward "kept better company, and became a Tory." He said this with a smile, in pleasant allusion, as I thought, to the opposition between his own political principles and those of the duke's clan. He added that Mr. Campbell, after the revolution, was thrown into jail on account of his tenets; but, on ...

— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... general shout burst from the by-standers—"A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!" It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and, having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded ...

— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... Nay, if there were not a Heaven's radiance of Justice, prophetic, clearly of Heaven, discernible behind all these confused world-wide entanglements, of Landlord interests, Manufacturing interests, Tory-Whig interests, and who knows what other interests, expediencies, vested interests, established possessions, inveterate Dilettantisms, Midas-eared Mammonisms,—it would seem to every one a flat impossibility, which all wise men might as well at once abandon. If you do not know eternal Justice from ...

— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

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