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Glite Dictionary
🚫 Opposition to technology 🧑‍🏭 Workers' machine protests
Luddism

Luddism

9.8
A protest movement in early 1800s England in which cloth workers break factory machines
  • noun
  • /ˈlʌdɪzəm/
translation icon : ludismo
  • The frustrations of workers during Luddism led to widespread destruction of factory equipment in an attempt to resist technological change.

Examples

  • Many historians regard Luddism as an early example of a labor movement fighting against the negative impacts of industrialization.

  • Following this, Luddism declined, though there was sporadic violence as late as 1817.

    Academic text (2010)

  • Luddism was a significant movement in early 19th-century England, where textile workers protested against Luddism by destroying machinery.

Synonyms

ludditism
vsLuddism
9.9

Refusal to accept new machines or technology, sometimes shown by damaging them

is the specific early nineteenth century English movement of textile workers destroying machinery

Surface Forms

Luddism singular
Luddisms plural

Morphology

Luddism = Ludd (opaque) = Ludd + ism

The formation names a historical movement after a person; the components do not transparently convey the specific historical actions (destroying machinery).

Etymology

Luddism comes from stories about Ned Ludd, a cloth worker who smashed a machine for making stockings. In the early 1800s in England many workers copied him and destroyed factory machines to protest the arrival of new machines, so Luddism names that protest movement.