Know-Nothing

See also: know-nothing

English

Etymology

Party members claimed to know nothing about the party when questioned.

Noun

Know-Nothing (plural Know-Nothings)

1. (historical) A member of a secret antiforeigner political organization in the nineteenth-century United States.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “Know-Nothing”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)