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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 agrós, meaning "piece of land, 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.
Synonyms
Examples of agrarian in a Sentence
Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times, 20 Feb. 2024
But many scientists say that one culprit is particularly to blame for the Delhi smog: farmers burning rice stubble in Punjab, an agrarian state to the northwest.
—Hari Kumar, New York Times, 3 Nov. 2023
The capitalists had been building their looms and expanding the factory system for decades, powered mostly by the labor of agrarian women and children, until the conditions arose to suck in more skilled cottage workers too.
—WIRED, 22 Oct. 2023
Hopes for the agrarian focused market quickly slipped after regulators failed to open stores on time.
—Wesley Parnell, Rolling Stone, 22 Mar. 2024
But Portugal's beach destination du jour actually sits in the more agrarian region of Alentejo.
—Lindsay Cohn, Travel + Leisure, 7 Mar. 2024
Waldman even seems to revive an old agrarian connection between working and writing, between a line drawn by a plow and a line of poetry.
—Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 6 Mar. 2024
Jalisco is also home to a diversified agrarian economy that produces a variety of products ranging from tequila (a product that earned Mexico $4.2 billion in export revenues in 2023) to berries.
—Nathaniel Parish Flannery, Forbes, 28 Feb. 2024
That agrarian spirit of self-reliance mixed with egalitarianism still emanates from Pendergrass.
—Tyrone Beason, Los Angeles Times, 21 Sep. 2023
Daniel Immerwahr, The New Yorker, 16 Oct. 2023
Even if you’re not blessed with a home that’s contemporaneous with George Washington—or couldn’t distinguish between John Deere and John Derian in a police lineup, for that matter—there are still ways to embrace your inner agrarian.
—Anna Fixsen, ELLE Decor, 15 Mar. 2023
The writer-agrarian-soil conservationist founded Malabar Farm in Mansfield.
—Marc Bona, cleveland, 7 Dec. 2020
Closing the forts frustrated foreclosure proceedings; moreover, for Shay’s enraged agrarians, the courts were a tangible symbol of the eastern moneyed interest and of a government unresponsive to their needs.
—Thomas Wendel, National Review, 4 July 2019
Southern agrarians disdained capitalism; Peter Viereck spent his time lecturing Americans on the virtues of Metternich and that great homegrown Tory, FDR.
—Richard Brookhiser, National Review, 4 June 2019
There are the populares of Ancient Rome, the agrarians of nineteenth-century Wisconsin, and the Peronists of twentieth-century Argentina.
—Yascha Mounk, New Republic, 19 July 2017
Jefferson, an agrarian, generally opposed a strong central government.
—Jonathan W. White, Smithsonian, 17 Mar. 2017
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'agrarian.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near agrarian
Cite this Entry
“Agrarian.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agrarian. Accessed 24 Apr. 2024.
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