# Wilkinsonian
## English
### Etymology

From Wilkinson +‎ -ian.

### Adjective

Wilkinsonian
* Pertaining to the Quaker preacher Jemima Wilkinson, known as the Public Universal Friend, or to the Society of Universal Friends.
** 1939, Henry Louis Mencken, [New] American Mercury, page 293:She began to preach, announcing herself as "the Publick Universal Friend," and soon [...succeeded] in organizing groups of Wilkinsonian celibates at New Milford, Conn., and at East Greenwich and South Kingston, R.I.
** 2009, Herbert A. Wisbey, Jr., Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend, Cornell University Press, →ISBN, page 208:J. Hagadorn Wells, who was born in Kingston (Little Rest) in 1817, recalled in his reminiscences, recorded in 1897: " […] more than once I joined a raiding party of young fellows, to ransack the empty apartments, scare up the ghosts of generations of rural gentry and Wilkinsonian saints, dead; but never omitting a less romantic visit to the pear trees."
** 2017, Adam Jortner, Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic, University of Virginia Press, →ISBN:Moreover, not every resident of Jerusalem was a devoted Universal Friend; […] Even so, Wilkinson appeared to be making inroads. Historians have missed this Wilkinsonian renaissance, perhaps because they have been influenced by the repeated insistence of anti-Wilkinsonians that her influence was in decline […]
* Pertaining to any of a large number of other people with the surname Wilkinson,
** 1855, Gilbert Auchinleck, A History of the War Between Great Britain and the United States of America: During the Years 1812, 1813, and 1814, Maclear, page 281:A retreat was not to be thought of, and in case any craven spirit should exist amongst the four thousand, (save one,) breasts animated with Wilkinsonian ardour, (perhaps as James has it "as an additional stimulus to glory") a picked man was […]
** 1962, Review of English Literature:I have a Wilkinsonian admiration for T. F. Powys, ranking him in English literature with Bunyan, Swift and Blake.
** 1975, Correlli Barnett, Strategy and Society, Manchester University Press, →ISBN, page 1:Even today, despite the experience of the Cold War, despite Kissinger's strictly un-idealistic balance-of-power diplomacy, it must be said that it is not the Wilkinsonian viewpoint which dominates British opinion at large but, however modified, […]

### Noun

Wilkinsonian (plural Wilkinsonians)
* A follower of the Quaker preacher Jemima Wilkinson, known as the Public Universal Friend; a member of the Universal Friends.
** 1994, Ruth Kauffman, Reginald Wright Kauffman, The Latter Day Saints: A Study of the Mormons in the Light of Economic Conditions, University of Illinois Press, →ISBN, page 12:The Wilkinsonians are equally to the present point. They lived, for the most part, not more than twenty- five miles from Manchester, New York, the town in which Mormonism was first preached; […]
** 2017, Adam Jortner, Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic, University of Virginia Press, →ISBN:Yet Wilkinsonians (or the Universal Friends, as they dubbed themselves), despite their obscurity, provide a crucial case study. The prophetic and supernatural claims of the Wilkinsonians preceded all their contemporaries, but […]
* A supporter of any of a number of other people named Wilkinson.
** 1879, George Hill, The electoral history of the borough of Lambeth since 1832, page 134, referring to supporters of William Arthur Wilkinson:
    If Mr. Doulton does not know what consistency is, teach him, and place Mr. Wilkinson at the head of the poll. That was regarded as "vituperation," and the St. Giles's poet was called into play. This was the shot he fired at the Wilkinsonians […]
** 1885, Book-lore: A Magazine Devoted to Old Time Literature, page 103:Pagitt proceeds to discriminate the varieties of the Separatists. In addition to Brownists, there are Barrowists, Wilkinsonians, Johnsonians, Ainsworthians, Robinsonians, and followers of John Smith and Thomas Lemar.
** 1970, Harry Emerson Wildes, Anthony Wayne, Trouble Shooter of the American Revolution (Greenwood), referring to supporters of James Wilkinson:
    The Wilkinsonians, unaware that the Commander-in-Chief knew of their plots, continued their disloyal practices. They spread rumors among the Kentuckians that trouble with the commissariat was all Wayne's fault, and that […]
** 2011, Robin Fox, The Tribal Imagination: Civilization and the Savage Mind, page 97:Edith Sitwell, in her charming history of Bath, lists, at the time of Jonathan Swift's sojournal there, just a few of the sects available, […] . There were Antinomians, Hederingtonians, Theaurian Joanites, Seekers, Waiters, Reevists, Brownists, Baronists, Wilkinsonians, Familists, Ranters, Muggletonians, and the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion. They are all now forgotten: the law of extinction seems to apply as ruthlessly to sects as it does to species.

#### Related terms

* Wilkinsonianism