[f. SPIRIT sb. + -IST.]

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  1.  One who believes in spiritism; a spiritualist.

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1858.  Brownson’s Q. Rev., April, 180. Mormons, Swedenborgians, and Spiritists, &c.

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1867.  Christie, in Manning, Ess. Relig. & Lit., Ser. II. 310. These remarks apply to such pretenders to Divine communications as … the Jansenists, and modern Spiritists.

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1896.  W. R. Newbold, in Pop. Sci. Monthly, L. 229. This condition finds its ideal fulfillment in the ‘developing séance’ of the spiritist.

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  b.  attrib. as adj. = SPIRITISTIC a.

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1865.  Cornh. Mag., April, 481. Those who believe in spiritist and other marvels.

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1877.  J. E. Carpenter, trans. Tiele’s Hist. Relig., 35. This religious community represents rather the spiritist side of Animism.

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1887.  Amer. Nat., XXI. 497. The spiritist practices of Chinese women.

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  2.  = SPIRITUALIST 3.

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1878.  T. Sinclair, Mount, 39. Spiritists or Comtists, let them keep to the moorlands of life.

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1883.  L. Oliphant, Altiora Peto, II. 22. Why he should shrink from this hypothesis for fear of becoming a materialist, as much as the scientific man does from it for fear of becoming a spiritist.

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