Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🧑‍🎤 Irish nationalist ⚠️ Offensive term 🇮🇪 Irish republican 📖 Irish mythology
Fenian

Fenian

1 9.9
Relating to a 1800s Irish group that wanted independence from Britain
  • adjective
  • /ˈfiːniən/
  • UK
translation icon : feniano
  • No Fenian guttersnipe threatens me.
  • Fenian Brotherhood

Examples

  • Those Fenian men!

    Angela's Ashes (1999)

  • One of his brothers was a member of the Fenian Brotherhood, and through his contacts, the Fenians commissioned Holland to design the submarine that became known as the Fenian Ram.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • He called me a fenian bastard.

    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016)

  • The Fenian men!

    Angela's Ashes (1999)

  • A perfect way for an Irishman to scare the pants off a Brit: invent a Fenian assassination, the unspoken meaning being: it might be you next.

    Fiction book (2002)

  • The Fenian movement played a crucial role in advocating for Irish independence in the late 19th century.

  • Many Fenian activists were arrested during the uprising as they sought to challenge British authority in Ireland.

  • The ideals of the Fenian Brotherhood were centered around a united and free Ireland, free from British control.

Surface Forms

Fenian positive

Etymology

Fenian comes from the Irish word Fianna, which means 'band of warriors'; 19th-century Irish republicans chose that brave name for their movement. So Fenian as an adjective means 'relating to that movement and its ideas'.