SEDITION

[Dr. Goodword]

• sedition •

Pronunciation: sê-di-shên • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun, mass

Meaning: 1. Rebellion, attempting to provoke a riot, especially to overthrow a government or authority. 2. Speech intended to incite to rebellion.

Notes: Apparently sedition has been a popular activity in the history of English-speaking people for this Good Word comes replete with a rich array of related words. The adjective, seditious, describes the inclinations of people who tend to foment rebellion; you can also be seditionary. This latter word may further be used as a noun to refer to such people: she is a seditionary, but then she is also a seditionist. Seditiousness is the proclivity that gave rise to all these words, which suggests that it is a proclivity high on our minds over the years.

In Play: Among the most famous seditionists of all time were, of course, the Founding Fathers of the United States. The Boston Tea Party was a grand act of sedition. The point is, whether sedition is good or bad depends on your perspective. Czar Nicholas II of Russia did not like sailing on the sea of sedition in Russia at the turn of the 20th century; V. I. Lenin thought it just the medicine Russia needed.

Word History: Today's Good Word is another we borrowed from Old French and forgot to return. French inherited it from Latin seditio(n) "mutiny, civil discord" which comprises sed- "apart, on one's own" + itio(n) "going", a noun from itus, the past participle of ire "to go". The root sed- goes back to Proto-Indo-European *swe-, which also underlies English self and Hindi swami "one's own master, person due respect". There is evidence of its presence in solo, too. The political arm of the Irish Republican Army is called Sinn Fein, which means "we ourselves" in Irish. Fein comes from the same root with a suffix -n and centuries of lingual tinkering.

[saparris]

Weekly newspapers should be called This Week's Sedition.

[Slava]

I know I'm being picky here, but I've never liked Czar. To me, the Cz represents a Ch sound, as in Czechoslovakia. Give me Ts here: Tsar. Then we might even start to pronounce the word properly, instead of the Zar we now use.

Gripe, gripe, grumble, whine.

[saparris]

I know I'm being picky here, but I've never liked Czar. To me, the Cz represents a Ch sound, as in Czechoslovakia. Give me Ts here: Tsar. Then we might even start to pronounce the word properly, instead of the Zar we now use.

Tsorry. I doubt that you will ever get most people to pronounce tsar/czar to you tsatisfaction.

[LukeJavan8]

The last Czar of Bulgaria, Simeon, is the only person
ever elected as prime minister of his country. He was
deposed decades ago, and ran for the post in the
early 2000's.

[saparris]

AKA Tsar of Bulgaria.

[LukeJavan8]

I'll go with the State Department's "King". Not being
Bulgarian nor Russian, it fits me to a T.

King Simeon II assumed control of the throne in 1943 at the age of six following the death of his father Boris III. With the entry of Soviet troops into Bulgaria in September 1944 and the defeat of the Axis Powers in World War II, communism emerged as the dominant political force within Bulgaria. Simeon, who later returned and served as Prime Minister, was forced into exile in 1946 and resided primarily in Madrid, Spain. By 1946, Bulgaria had become a satellite of the Soviet Union, remaining so throughout the Cold War period. Todor Zhivkov, the head of the Bulgarian Communist Party, ruled the country for much of this period. During his 27 years as leader of Bulgaria, democratic opposition was crushed; agriculture was collectivized and industry was nationalized; and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church fell under the control of the state.
As Bulgaria emerged from the throes of communism, it experienced a period of social and economic turmoil that culminated in a severe economic and financial crisis in late 1996-early 1997. With the help of the international community, former Prime Minister Ivan Kostov initiated a series of reforms in 1997 that helped stabilize the country's economy and put Bulgaria on the Euro-Atlantic path. Elections in 2001 ushered in a new government and president. In July 2001, Bulgaria's ex-king Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha became the first former monarch in post-communist Eastern Europe to become Prime Minister. His government continued to pursue Euro-Atlantic integration, democratic reform, and development of a market economy. Bulgaria became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on March 29, 2004, and a member of the European Union (EU) on January 1, 2007.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3236.htm