a. and sb. [f. L. agrāri-us pertaining to land (f. agr- field + -āri-us: see -ARY) + -AN. The L. was first adapted as agrarie (cf. contrary), or untranslated.]
A. adj.
1. Rom. Hist. Relating to the land: epithet of a law (Lex agraria) for the division of conquered lands.
[1533. Bellenden, Livy, IV. (1822), 379. The law Agrarie … put the Faderis fra the public landis, quhilkis was wranguislie possedit.
1580. North, Plutarch (1676), 647. Cæsar preferred the Law Agraria.]
1618. Bolton, Florus, I. xxvi. 71. Spurius Cassius, suspected of affecting Soveraignty, because hee had published the Agrarian Law.
1838. Arnold, Hist. Rome, I. ix. 161. An agrarian law for the division of a certain proportion of the public land.
2. gen. Relating to, or connected with, landed property. Agrarian outrage, an act of violence originating in discord between landlords and tenants.
17[?]. in Somers’s Tracts, II. 453. Whatever Reflections may be rais’d from the Agrarian Principles.
1833. Gen. P. Thompson, Exerc. (1842), II. 422. Have not your landlords brought you to the very eve of an agrarian war?
1876. Rogers, Pol. Econ., xiii. 23. The Irish land system familiarised the peasantry with agrarian outrages.
3. Of, relating to, or connected with, cultivated land, or its cultivation.
1792. A. Young, Trav. France, 197. Signore Giobert, academician, and of the agrarian society.
1864. Burton, Scot Abroad, II. ii. 163. The heartless agrarian devastation accompanying the movements of the Russian troops.
1867. J. Draper, Amer. Civ. War, I. xxvi. 445. The only bulwark … against the clamoring rule of agrarian majorities.
4. Bot. Growing wild in the fields. Also, name proposed by H. C. Watson for the lowest of the altitudinal zones of vegetation, within the limits of the cultivation of corn.
1843. H. C. Watson, Distrib. Brit. Pl., 34. Agrarian region.
1861. Buckman, Rep. Brit. Assoc. (L.). We believe that the charlock is only an agrarian form of brassica.
B. sb.
1. An agrarian law.
1656. Harrington, Oceana, 54 (R.). An equal agrarian is a perpetual law establishing and preserving the balance of dominion.
1823. Lamb, Elia, Ser. I. xvi. (1865), 125. The estate has passed into more prudent hands, and nothing but an agrarian can restore it.
2. One in favor of a redistribution of landed property.
1818. Southey, in Q. Rev., XIX. 97. An Agrarian of three hours standing.
1882. Goldw. Smith, in Pall Mall G., 24 May, 2/2. The agrarians will be satisfied with nothing short of the total spoliation of the landowners.
