noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A supporter of Charles Babbage's Reflections on the Decline of Science and some of its Causes (1830), a paper criticizing the failure of government to support scientific research. derogatory, historical

Etymology

From decline + -arian.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.