MEANING
1. A person who strongly supports or follows a belief, movement, principle, or leader.
2. Sticking to a surface or to another object.
Use it for
identifying committed followers of a doctrine; distinguishing allegiance from authorship or public advocacy; analyzing membership in an intellectual movementDistinguishes attachment to a belief or movement from public advocacy; also records the unrelated physical adjective. Academic functions: Argumentation.
Words that belong together
- adherents of a doctrine
- a committed adherent
- adherents to a movement
On the page
Adherents of the movement shared a general commitment but differed on the proposed strategy.
The critic was an adherent of the approach without accepting every conclusion drawn by its founders.
The methods section distinguishes adherent material from particles removed by the cleaning step.
An adherent coating remained on the surface after the initial treatment.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- adherent
Usage notes
Primarily a countable noun: adherent, adherents. Adherent of/to + belief or movement. Also an adjective for sticking to a surface; no -er/-est forms. Register: formal. Commonness: uncommon (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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