Chartism

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The mid-nineteenth-century British movement that campaigned for universal male suffrage and parliamentary reforms to benefit working people
2. A historical reform campaign in Britain during the 1830s and 1840s demanding voting rights and fairer political representation for the working classes
3. The working-class political movement of nineteenth-century Britain that sought democratic reforms, such as the secret ballot and annual parliaments, through a national petition

Etymology: Chartism was the name given to a mass working-class movement in Britain in the 1830s and 1840s, and the name came from a document rather than a person or a place. Its supporters drew up the People's Charter, a set of six demands for parliamentary reform that included universal male suffrage and secret ballots. The movement took its label from that charter, and "chart" in the word is simply that document, the same "chart" that means a formal written paper or a map. The word is built from "chart" plus the suffix "-ism", which in English marks a doctrine, system or movement. Its Greek ancestry runs through the suffix alone: "-ismos" in Ancient Greek formed nouns of action, state or doctrine, and it entered English largely through Latin and French. So the chart is English and the suffix is Greek in origin, joined in English for a political programme.