Devolutionary

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Relating to the process by which a central government hands authority over certain matters to regional or local assemblies
2. Describing the transfer of governing powers away from a national authority toward smaller territorial bodies
3. Concerning the handing down of political authority from a central state to subordinate regional institutions

Etymology: "Devolutionary" is formed from "devolution" plus the suffix "-ary," and the suffix is the more ancient part of the story. The "-ary" ending comes from Latin "-arius," which denoted a person or thing connected with something, and it entered English through Middle English "-arie" before settling into the form used today. Its distant ancestry runs back through Proto-Italic and Proto-Indo-European, but the suffix became a standard English tool for building adjectives meaning "relating to" a noun. The base word, "devolution," carries the more striking shift. It comes from Latin "devolutio," a noun from "devolvere," meaning "to roll down," as a thing rolling downward. Over centuries, that physical sense of rolling or sinking gave way to the idea of something being passed downward or handed on, which is how "devolution" came to mean the transfer of power from a central authority to a subordinate one. "Devolutionary" therefore describes things connected with that transfer of authority.

Synonyms: devolving, decentralizing

Antonyms: centralizing, centralist