agrarian

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adjective agrar·i·an \ ə-ˈgrer-ē-ən \

Updated on: 19 Sep 2017

Definition of agrarian

1 :of or relating to fields or lands or their tenure

agrarian landscapes

2 a :of, relating to, or characteristic of farmers or their way of life

agrarian values

b :organized or designed to promote agricultural interests

an agrarian political party

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agrarian was our Word of the Day on 12/15/2013. Hear the podcast!

Examples of agrarian in a Sentence

a town founded in 1811 as an agrarian community

Recent Examples of agrarian from the Web

The peace accords include a deal on agrarian reform, to formalize land titles lost during the conflict.

— oscar medina, Bloomberg.com, "Post-Conflict Colombia Seeks to Become Agricultural Powerhouse," 27 July 2017
This cultivation allowed early humans to pivot from hunter-gather lifestyles to more agrarian societies.

— sarah gibbens, National Geographic, "What We Can Learn From This Ancient ‘Lunchbox’," 27 July 2017
Most of its residents survive within an agrarian economy, with simple farmers segregated from the elites by their poverty, illiteracy, and a total lack of any say in how their government operates.

— the tylt, cleveland.com, "Are American politics worse than they are on 'Game of Thrones'?," 17 July 2017
The equipment will eventually be on display at Naper Settlement as part of an agrarian exhibit.

— bill bird, Naperville Sun, "At 60, Naperville's 'airpark' subdivision still flying," 15 July 2017
Small family farms producing cocoa, coffee, cotton and food crops launched this agrarian revolution after the colonial state’s project to promote collective farming had failed.

— kim yi dionne, Washington Post, "Is Ivory Coast seeing a second ‘economic miracle’?," 14 July 2017
Over the next 20 years, Jefferson City would grow from a patchwork quilt of agrarian parcels and low-density housing to something resembling today's Uptown.

— richard campanella, NOLA.com, "How New Orleans took Uptown from Jefferson Parish," 11 July 2017
The regime sought to turn Cambodia into a mythological agrarian utopia, and emptied the country’s cities – including Phnom Penh – to achieve this.

— peter a. ford, The Christian Science Monitor, "Economy races ahead, but land-rights turmoil leaves many Cambodians behind," 11 July 2017
It was divided not only geographically, between East and West, but also by class – between the rural, agrarian peasants who occupied the expansive countrysides, and the intellectual elite in the cities.

— Smithsonian, "Why This Composer Made Melodies Out of Mountainsides," 1 July 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'agrarian.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

Today, an acre is generally considered to be a unit of land measuring 43,560 square feet (4,047 square meters). Before that standard was set, it's believed that an acre represented a rougher measurement - the amount of land that could be plowed in one day with a yoke of oxen. Both acre and agrarian, derive from the Latin noun ager and the Greek noun agros, meaning "field." (You can probably guess that agriculture is another descendant.) Agrarian, first used in English in the 16th century, describes things pertaining to the cultivation of fields, as well as the farmers who cultivate them.