What does "soft-liner" mean?

A person who holds a moderate position and may be willing to compromise, as opposed to a hard-liner.

What is a synonym for "soft-liner"?

Common synonyms include: nonfanatic.

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A person who holds a moderate position and may be willing to compromise, as opposed to a hard-liner. rare
"At this node the soft-liners must decide whether to do nothing and stick with the status quo or to open up the political regime."

"At this node the soft-liners must decide whether to do nothing and stick with the status quo or to open up the political regime."

From soft + line + -er, modelled on hard-liner.

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