seditious
adjective

- intending to persuade other people to oppose their government

- inciting or causing people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch

- a seditious act, speech, or piece of writing encourages people to fight against or oppose the government

Cambridge Dictionary,  Oxford Dictionary, Merriam-Webster

—
WORD ORIGIN



Seditious comes from Latin sēditiō, which literally meant "a going apart"—imagine people peeling away from the main group to plot something.

The Romans combined sē- (apart, aside) with itiō (going) to describe what happens when citizens split off and start stirring up trouble against the state. It wasn't just disagreement—it was actively encouraging others to break away and rebel.

When English borrowed it in the 1400s through French, it kept that exact flavour: seditious behaviour means you're not just complaining about the government, you're trying to get others to rise up against it.

Here's the clever bit: the word itself describes the action—“going apart” from authority. And it's related to "seduce" (leading someone aside) and "secession" (formally splitting off). They all share that same idea of movement away from the center.

So when someone's accused of "seditious speech," they're not just criticizing the government—they're actively trying to pull people away from it, to fracture the group. 

—
DANGEROUS WORDS, 1735

In 1735, New York printer John Peter Zenger faced a court nearly certain to convict him, not for what he did, but for what he dared to publish. His newspaper had exposed colonial governor William Cosby's corruption—a bold act that English law treated as criminal seditious libel. Truth offered no defense. Criticism of authority itself was considered dangerous, and Zenger's guilt seemed assured.

The trial became historic because of Zenger's lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, who defied centuries of legal precedent. Hamilton argued that truth should matter, that exposing corrupt government protected citizens rather than endangered them, and that jurors could judge both law and fact. When the jury acquitted Zenger, the law technically remained unchanged, but the cultural shift was profound. The verdict helped redefine 'seditious' speech from mere dissent to genuine threats against political order, laying groundwork for the First Amendment decades later.

What counts as seditious today often depends less on what's said than on who feels threatened by hearing it.

Helga & Paul Smith

—
SYNONYMS

agitating, agitational, anti-establishment, anti-government, behaving SEDITIOUSLY, brewing rebellion, calling for overthrow, challenging the state, conspiring to overthrow, defiant, destabilizing, disloyal, dissident, encouraging insurrection, fanning the flames, fomenting unrest, incendiary, inciting disorder, inciting rebellion, inciting to riot, inflammatory, insubordinate, insurgency-linked, insurgent, insurrectionary, mutinous, plotting against the state, poisoning minds against authority, promoting revolt, provocative, rabble-rousing, radical, rebellious, revolutionary, riotous, sowing discord, spreading dissent, stirring up trouble, stoking unrest, subversive, threatening public order, treasonable, treasonous, traitorous, turning people against the state, undermining authority, undermining the government, whipping up opposition

—
SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation today, say something like:

"In his novel Wasp, Eric Frank Russell brilliantly describes how a single citizen's covert SEDITIOUS behaviour can topple an entire government."

—
Please Support OWAD.

On evenings and weekends, I research and write your daily OWAD newsletter together with Helga (my lovely wife and business partner) and our eagle-eyed daughter Jennifer. It remains FREE, AD-FREE, and ALIVE thanks to voluntary donations from appreciative readers.

If you aren’t already, please consider supporting us — even a small donation, equivalent to just 1-cup-of-coffee a month, would help us in covering expenses for mailing, site-hosting, maintenance, and service.

Just head over to DonorBox:
https://donorbox.org/owad-q4-2023-5

or

Bank transfer:
Paul Smith
IBAN: DE75 7316 0000 0002 5477 40

Important: please state as ’Verwendungszweck’: “OWAD donation” and the email address used to subscribe to OWAD.

Thanks so much,

Paul
(OWAD Founder)