Early "terrorist"

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED has the modern sense from 1806, but nothing again for sixty years. The
completely natural usage below suggests that the word was familiar, at
least to politicians and journalists, in the 1830s:

1839 _The Champion and Weekly Herald_ (London) (May 19) 4: As a threat has
been held out that the country-town will be put in a state of siege on
Monday by the terrorists of Kirriemuir and Forfar, a troop of Dragoons from
Piershill is hourly expected to quell the disturbances.

JL

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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