Bonapartean

English

Etymology

Bonaparte +‎ -an

Adjective

Bonapartean (comparative more Bonapartean, superlative most Bonapartean)

1. (dated) Of or pertaining to Napoleon Bonaparte or his family.
   • 1814, Alexis Eustaphieve, Memorable predictions of the late events in Europe, page 98:

     That Austria was averse to the dethronement of Bonaparte, there can be no doubt, from her well known political character, and her interest in the continuation of the Bonapartean dynasty.

   • 1846, Herman Melville, Typee, a Romance of the South Sea:

     But here I was again mistaken; for Mehevi, in conducting his warlike operations, rather inclined to the Fabian than to the Bonapartean tactics, husbanding his resources and exposing his troops to no unnecessary hazards.

   • 1863, Ahriman III K.G., Ought France to Worship the Bonapartes?, page 168:

     Because the historical Bonapartean physiognomy is remarkable for a strong jaw-bone, every prince and princess of the Imperial family, with the exception of the Emperor, assert their Bonapartean blood by protruding their chins and clenchng their teeth, although there are some of them, who, if they followed nature, would allow that portion of their faces to retreat.

   • 2003, Helen Hughes, The Historical Romance:

     He takes her back, presumably to a happy marriage, though not to be a Princess: he is able to act on his own account because in some Bonapartean reshuffle of territory he has lost his Principality.

2. Of or pertaining to the philology of Louis Lucien Bonaparte
   • 1869, Robert Backhouse Peacock, A Glossary of the Dialect of the Hundred of Lonsdale, North and South of the Sands, In the County of Lancaster:

     It would be easy to extend the list of words that might be demonstrated, by means of the Bonapartean versions, to possess exclusively Northumbrian characteristics, from the lists about to be given (from which about thirty more words could be tested in the same manner and with the same results as the preceding five words have exhibited); but to repeat the same process so often over would only be tedious.

   • 1871, Alexander John Ellis, On Early English Pronunciation, with Especial Reference to Shakspere and Chaucer:

     Hence, whatever may be though of the palaeotypic equivalents afterwards added, each vowel can be immediately identified as B1, B2, etc., B indicating Bonapartean, and thus referred to in any English or foreign treatise.

Noun

Bonapartean (plural Bonaparteans)

1. A supporter of Bonapartism.
   • 1843, George William Johnson, The Stranger in India: Or, Three Years in Calcutta - Volume 2, page 263:

     Yet so well advised were the Bonaparteans of their leader's promised coming, that during the preceding winte , a standing toast among them wa , “The violet, which will return in the spring.”

   • 1852, Andrew Bell, quoted in, “The Life of the Rev. Andrew Bell, by Robert Southey”, in Calcutta Review:

     Though I have been in America, Asia, Africa, as well as Europe, and in a country notorious of late, (let the Bonaparteans say where,) beyond the limits of them all, I have, in my present visitation, been carried in the line of my vocation further north than ever I was before.

   • 1875, Charles Porterfield Krauth, The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology:

     Shakspeare has been called silly by Puritans, Milton worse than silly by Prelatists and Papists, Wordsworth was long called silly by Bonaparteans; what will not the odium theologicum or politicum find worthless and silly?

   • 1883, George Matthews Arnold, Robert Pocock, page 205:

     At Boulogne they are in politics Bonaparteans; at Calais Bourboneans.