conservative Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun a person who is reluctant to accept changes and new ideas
    conservativist.
  2. noun a member of a Conservative Party
  3. adjective resistant to change
  4. adjective satellite having social or political views favoring conservatism
  5. adjective satellite avoiding excess
    cautious.
    • a conservative estimate
  6. adjective satellite unimaginatively conventional
    buttoned-down; button-down.
    • a colorful character in the buttoned-down, dull-grey world of business"- Newsweek
  7. adjective satellite conforming to the standards and conventions of the middle class
    materialistic; bourgeois.
    • a bourgeois mentality

WordNet

Con*serv"a*tive adjective
Etymology
Cf. F. conservatif.
Definitions
  1. Having power to preserve in a safe of entire state, or from loss, waste, or injury; preservative.
  2. Tending or disposed to maintain existing institutions; opposed to change or innovation.
  3. Of or pertaining to a political party which favors the conservation of existing institutions and forms of government as the Conservative party in england; -- contradistinguished from Liberal and Radical.
    We have always been conscientuously attached to what is called the Tory, and which might with more propierty be called the Conservative, party. Quart. Rev. (1830).
    Clerk Maxwell.
Con*serv"a*tive noun
Definitions
  1. One who, or that which, preserves from ruin, injury, innovation, or radical change; a preserver; a conserver.
    The Holy Spirit is the great conservative of the new life. Jer. Taylor.
  2. One who desires to maintain existing institutions and customs; also, one who holds moderate opinions in politics; -- opposed to revolutionary or radical.
  3. (Eng. Hist.) A member of the Conservative party.

Webster 1913