reconstructionistn.adj.
/ˌriːkənˈstrʌkʃnɪst/, U.S. /ˌrikənˈstrəkʃ(ə)nəst/ A. n.
1. U.S. A person who favours or supports the policy of Reconstruction (reconstruction n. 1c). Now historical.In quot. 18611: a person who seeks to create a new Federal government.
ΘΚΠ
society > authority > rule or government > politics > American politics > [noun] > restoration to rights of Union > supporter of
reconstructionist1861
1861 Boston Daily Advertiser 26 Jan. 2/3 The people of Virginia and the other border States..are being seduced into this secession movement by a back road, as it were. They do not call themselves precisely disunionists... They are ‘reconstructionists’. They want all the States to secede until they can ‘reconstruct’ a new Union without New England and the other most obnoxious parts of the confederacy.
1861 M. B. Chesnut Diary 8 Mar. in C. V. Woodward Mary Chesnut's Civil War (1981) ii. 19 Now we may be sure the bridge is broken. And yet, in the Alabama convention they say reconstructionists abound and are busy.
1888 J. C. Harris in Harper's Mag. Apr. 703/2 The Republican ‘reconstructionists’..barred the way.
1992 D. Morgan Rising in West iii. xxiv. 480 Herbert W. Titus..strongly disputed that Robertson was a closet reconstructionist.
2. A Reconstructionist Jew. See sense B. 2.
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1940 Jewish Q. Rev. 31 209 As reconstructionists, both Dr. Kaplan and his disciple, Rabbi Eisenstein, believe that religion is the outstanding contribution made by the Jewish people to the world.
1967 Valley News (Van Nuys, Calif.) 10 Nov. (East ed.) 4 b Religious naturalism has also meant for Reconstructionists the abandonment of the notion that the Jews are God's ‘Chosen People’.
1993 H. Jacobson Roots Schmoots vii. 170 Reconstructionists are very traditional in ritual, but in a non-halachic way. Our view is that our Jewish heritage is humanly, not divinely, ordered.
3.
a. A person who reconstructs a past state of affairs hypothetically or theoretically. See reconstruct v. 2.
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the mind > mental capacity > perception or cognition > faculty of imagination > [noun] > one who imagines > the past
reconstructor1882
reconstructionist1949
1949 R. Wellek & E. A. Warren Theory of Lit. iv. 32 We must, these literary reconstructionists argue, enter into the mind and attitudes of past periods.
1958 Archivum Linguisticum 10 i. 8 The..prism of literature..may twist the actual sequence of events, as the reconstructionist is tempted to envision it.
2003 Jrnl. Amer. Oriental Soc. 123 379 What has been done by these earlier ‘reconstructionists’ is available to us on the bookshelves, whatever relationship it may have to linguistic reality.
b. Chiefly North American. A person who recreates the circumstances of an accident or crime (cf. reconstruction n. 1f). Also: a person who creates a physical likeness of a deceased person in cases where decomposition or other factors have made identification of a body difficult.
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1970 Post-Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin) 21 Sept. a14/6 An expert accident reconstructionist.
1991 Hobart (Tasmania) (Nexis) 13 May In many collisions the reconstructionists are not called in until weeks or months after the accident.
1992 Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo) (Nexis) 8 Apr. 7 The forensic reconstructionist..uses medical knowledge and artistic talent to reconstruct the face of the individual from the clues provided.
1995 Toronto Star (Nexis) 20 May a1 Using a pointer, the crime scene reconstructionist started on the top floor of the model, at the master bedroom.
2007 M. P. Burke Forensic Med. Investig. Motor Vehicle Incidents 197 The collision reconstructionist is an expert police investigator or engineer trained in the interpretation of a motor vehicle incident scene.
B. adj. (attributive).
1. Relating to or characterized by reconstruction (in various senses), spec. (U.S.) favouring the policy of Reconstruction (now historical: see reconstruction n. 1c).
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1864 M. H. Throop Future 119 The act of secession extinguished the Union party as soon as it was adopted, except as a reconstructionist party.
1919 W. L. Fleming Sequel of Appomattox xi. 258 The Klans..ran out of the community the worst of the reconstructionist officials.
1966 M. Scriven in W. H. Dray Philos. Analysis & Hist. 255 The difference between this analysis and the reconstructionist approach.
1979 Jrnl. Royal Soc. Arts Apr. 262/2 Rationality, objectivity, universalism and abstract analysis are features of the reconstructionist approach.
1993 Isis 84 427 Nugayev examines the genesis of Lorentz's program and comes to the conclusion that it was precisely its reconstructionist character and inability to solve the problem of the electron's own energy that brought about its empirical regression.
2. Judaism. Of or designating a movement in progressive Judaism, originating in North America during the 1920s, which emphasizes the common cultural and historical heritage of the Jewish people more than specific religious teachings.
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1928 S.A.J. Rev. 20 Jan. 3 The Society for the Advancement of Judaism..prefers to be considered a branch of the Reconstructionist movement in Jewish life.
1933 S. Dinin Judaism in Changing Civilization 13 There is one group within the ranks of Conservative Judaism which veers toward Reconstructionist Judaism.
2006 Washington Post (Nexis) 8 June (Final ed.) t16 The program is about how Reconstructionist Jews view gay rabbis, same-sex marriage and the welcoming of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2009; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.adj.1861