noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A belief that property is an absolute right, sometimes to the extreme of considering it to overrule the human rights of others. uncountable
2. 2
   Advocacy of proprietary colonies and proprietary government in colonial America. historical, uncountable
3. 3
   A philosophy and belief that very small businesses are generally more humane than large corporations. uncountable

Etymology

From proprietarian + -ism.

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