Baathn.
/bɑːθ/, U.S. /bɑs/, /bɑθ/ Politics.
Used attributively and occasionally absol. (with the) to designate a pan-Arab socialist party founded by Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Din al-Bitar, and other intellectuals in Syria in 1943.
ΘΚΠ
society > authority > rule or government > politics > Arab and Middle East politics > [noun] > specific Syrian party
Baath1955
society > authority > rule or government > politics > Arab and Middle East politics > [adjective] > specific Syrian party
Baath1955
1955 Times 14 May 7/3 Malki..was known to be sympathetic to the Baath, or Socialist Party, and he may have led a Baathist faction within the Army.
1962 Listener 5 Apr. 597/1 The Ba'ath leaders are doctrinaire pan-Arabs of the frontier-smashing variety, preaching a mystical marriage of Arab unity and socialism.
1963 Daily Tel. 24 July 17/3 The Baath Governments in Damascus and Baghdad began today to close their ranks to combat President Nasser's new moves for leadership over the eastern Arab world... Al Baath, official organ of the Syrian Baath régime, says to-day [etc.].
1971 W. Z. Laqueur Dict. Politics 34 The Ba'ath has not succeeded in clarifying political issues, nor has it (so far) brought greater stability in those countries where it has achieved power.
1972 G. M. D. Howat & A. J. P. Taylor Dict. World Hist. 153/1 Ba'th Party, Arab political party, founded (1943) by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, centred in Syria, but with branches in other Arab countries, especially Iraq, and advocating Arab unity, socialism, and neutralism.
1974 Encycl. Brit. Macropædia XVII. 924/2 Most authority is wielded by the ruling Ba῾th (‘Renaissance’) Arab Socialist Party.
1981 Economist 24 Jan. 42/3 This belief is stated in its most extreme form in the opening words of the constitution of the Baath party, different factions of which now rule Iraq and Syria.
Derivatives
ˈBaathism n. the ideology of this party.
ΚΠ
1963 Time 22 Nov. 29/3 Baathism is being extended to the Syrian and Iraqi armies.
1970 Times 3 Apr. (Arab League Suppl.) p. x/3 Baathism..might win an appeal in an area which will undoubtedly suffer a series of political traumas in the coming years.
ˈBaathist adj. and n.
ΚΠ
1955Baathist [see main sense].
1955 Times 14 May 7/3 The P.P.S. and the Baathists are..at opposite ends of the ideological scale.
1962 Listener 5 Apr. 597/1 I remember the Ba'ath founder, Michel Aflaq, saying to me that they thought that President Nasser had become a Ba'athist.
1980 Daily Tel. 24 Sept. 4/6 Iraq, whose Ba'athist philosophy concentrates on pan-Arabism, is out to secure leadership of the Gulf and of the Arab world.
1981 Economist 24 Jan. 43/1 The first ‘United Arab Republic’..came about in 1958 because the unionist Syrian Baathists threw themselves into the arms of Egypt's President Nasser.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1989; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.1955