Origin and history of patriot

patriot(n.)

1590s, "compatriot," from French patriote (15c.) and directly from Late Latin patriota "fellow-countryman" (6c.), from Greek patriotes "fellow countryman," from patrios "of one's fathers," patris "fatherland," from pater (genitive patros) "father" (see father (n.)); with -otes, suffix expressing state or condition. Liddell & Scott write that patriotes was "applied to barbarians who had only a common [patris], [politai] being used of Greeks who had a common [polis] (or free-state)."

Meaning "loyal and disinterested lover and defender of one's country and its interests" is attested from c. 1600, but it became an ironic term of ridicule or abuse from mid-18c. in England, so that Johnson, who at first defined it as "one whose ruling passion is the love of his country," in his fourth edition added, "It is sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government."

The name of patriot had become [c. 1744] a by-word of derision. Horace Walpole scarcely exaggerated when he said that ... the most popular declaration which a candidate could make on the hustings was that he had never been and never would be a patriot. [Macaulay, "Horace Walpole," 1833]*

It was somewhat revived in reference to resistance movements in overrun countries in World War II, and it has usually had a positive sense in American English, where the phony and rascally variety has been consigned to the word patrioteer (1928).

Oriana Fallaci ["The Rage and the Pride," 2002] marvels that Americans, so fond of patriotic, patriot, and patriotism, lack the root noun and are content to express the idea of patria by cumbersome compounds such as homeland. (Joyce, Shaw, and H.G. Wells all used patria as an English word early 20c., but it failed to stick.) Patriots' Day (April 19, the anniversary of the 1775 skirmishes at Lexington and Concord Bridge) was observed as a legal holiday in Maine and Massachusetts from 1894.

* The aversion of Johnson, a moderate Tory, and others likely was exacerbated by the politics of the previous generation, where the anti-Walpole faction of the Whigs began calling themselves "Patriots," perhaps because they often criticized the German-centric foreign policies of the Georges. Their power culminated in the crisis of 1739-41 and their theories in Bolingbroke's "The Idea of a Patriot King."

also from 1590s

patriot(adj.)

"patriotic," 1732, from patriot (n.).

also from 1732

Entries linking to patriot

father(n.)

Middle English fader, from Old English fæder "he who begets a child, nearest male ancestor;" also "any lineal male ancestor; the Supreme Being," and by late Old English, "one who exercises parental care over another," from Proto-Germanic *fader (source also of Old Saxon fadar, Old Frisian feder, Dutch vader, Old Norse faðir, Old High German fatar, German vater; in Gothic usually expressed by atta).

This is from the PIE root *pəter- "father" (source also of Sanskrit pitar-, Greek pater, Latin pater, Old Persian pita, Old Irish athir "father"), which is presumably from baby-speak sound "pa." The ending formerly was regarded as an agent-noun affix. The classic example of Grimm's Law, where PIE "p-" becomes Germanic "f-."

The spelling with -th- (15c.) reflects a widespread phonetic shift in Middle English that turned -der to -ther in many words, perhaps reinforced in this case by Old Norse forms; the spelling caught up to pronunciation in 1500s (compare mother (n.), weather (n.), hither, gather).

As a title of various Church dignitaries from c. 1300; the meaning "creator, inventor, author" is from mid-14c.; that of "anything that gives rise to something else" is from late 14c. As a respectful title for an older man, recorded from 1550s. Father-figure is from 1954. Fathers "leading men, elders" is from 1580s.

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man;

I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

[Wordsworth, 1802]

patriotic(adj.)

1650s, "of one's own country," from French patriotique or directly from Late Latin patrioticus, from Greek patriotikos, from patriotes (see patriot). Meaning "full of patriotism, supporting one's own country; directed to the public safety and welfare" is from 1757. Related: Patriotical.