modernizern.

1732 A. Pope Miscellany on Taste 3 He can read Homer and Statius, nay, and Chaucer and Shakespear, in their Originals, without Recourse either to a rhiming Translator, or a Modernizer to point him out their Meaning.

1739 G. Whitefield in Life (1756) 225 The Generality of our Modernizers of Christianity.

1785 S. Boyse in J. Sterling Cambuscan sig. A2^v This Poem was continued by Spenser, and admired by Milton. It has been considerably improved by M^r. Boyse, the Modernizer.

1805 R. Southey in Ann. Rev. 3 563 Not only the style, but the morals of the original,..are vitiated by the French modernizers.

1831 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. Feb. 222/2 The few remnants of church-limnery that have escaped the fanatics and the modernizers.

1886 H. M. Posnett Compar. Lit. 47 We expect the old harmony between earlier sounds and ideas to be kept up by the moderniser.

1944 Amer. Econ. Rev. 34 46 Reason must be the modernizer of the democratic tradition.

1984 Rev. Eng. Stud. Feb. 59 Editors—even modernizers—often reproduce such guidance on syllabification.

1995 Times Lit. Suppl. 28 July 10/2 Nothing much has changed,..enthusiastic admiration for Ataturk, the raki drinker, the secularist, the modernizer.

1970 S. L. Barraclough in I. L. Horowitz Masses in Lat. Amer. iv. 162 It may be a prerequisite..for new groups to displace the traditional elites—to enable the ‘modernizers’ to mobilize the resources..required for a big push.

1995 Daily Tel. 22 Feb. 23/1 In weak moments, John Prescott MP will use the expression ‘beautiful people’ to describe Blairite modernisers in his party.