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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
Sammy Roth, Los Angeles Times, 18 Apr. 2024
In agrarian states like Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, rising debt has seen farmers taking to the streets to demand minimum incomes and profit.
—Astha Rajvanshi, TIME, 12 Apr. 2024
As Ethiopia transitioned from an agrarian peasant society to a fast-developing capitalist economy in the new millennium, ethnic boundaries sometimes clashed with the growth of cities grew and with the movements of a mobile workforce.
—Alex De Waal, Foreign Affairs, 8 Apr. 2024
Michigan was transformed from an agrarian state into one where virtually anyone willing to hoist a wrench could earn enough in a factory to buy a home and take the family on vacation — often, behind the wheel of a Ford.
—Peter S. Goodman, New York Times, 19 Feb. 2024
The images revealed more than 6,000 earthen platforms distributed in a geometric pattern, connected by roads and intertwined with the agricultural landscapes and river drainages of an urban agrarian civilization in the eastern foothills of the Andes.
—Larissa Gao, NBC News, 12 Jan. 2024
That threat is existential and highly documented: namely, the digital revolution has done to the analog world of art, media and communication what the industrial revolution did to agrarian and handicraft economies a century before.
—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
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 1 May. 2024.
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