Peacenik
A “peacenik” is someone who opposes war. The term “peacenik” has one citation in 1958, but was popularized in 1962 and throughout the 1960s.
Wiktionary: peacenik
Etymology
peace + -nik
Noun
peacenik (plural peaceniks)
1.(sometimes derogatory) Someone who publicly opposes armed conflict in general, or a particular conflict; or who publicly opposes the proliferation of weapons.
Synonyms
. dove
. pacifist
Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary
peace·nik noun \-ˌnik\
Definition of PEACENIK
: an opponent of war; specifically : one who participates in antiwar demonstrations
First Known Use of PEACENIK
1962
(Oxford English Dictionary)
peacenik, n.
Etymology: <
peace n.+ -nik suffix.
orig. U.S. Freq. depreciative.
A member of a pacifist movement; an advocate of peace.
Originally used esp. of opponents to U.S. military intervention in Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s.
1962 Village Voice 25 Jan. 6/3 By now she has become a committed peacenik: she is a board member of the Greenwich Village Peace Center and heads there what is called‥the ‘Women’s Committee of Concern’.
1966 Guardian 17 Aug. 9/2 The 60-year-old Judge is not suspected of ‘peacenik’ sympathies.
1974 K. Millett Flying (1975) i. 117 A tenement crammed with peaceniks who have painted the word love across their brickfront.
5 January 1958, Rockford (IL) Morning Star, “Betty Beale’s Washington Letter,” pg. 2D, col. 1:
Perle Mesta announced that she wanted to see the administration give women more important jobs. “And I would like to give the biggest and best party I’ve ever given to launch a peacenik!”
30 July 1962, Albuquerque (NM) Tribune, “U.S. Group Tries To Pump True Peace Into Red Festival” by W. D. Friedenberg, pg. 1, cols. 4-5:
British Peaceniks
What they saw was a procession of unwashed British Peaceniks wearing nuclear disarmament badges, lively, colorful troupes of dancers from Senegal, Indonesia and India and uniformed platoons of smiling “youth”—many of them paunchy and gray-haired—rom the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and other Iron Curtain countries.
16 August 1962, Oregonian (Portland, OR), ‘The People’s Own Corner,” pg. 30, col. 3:
We have supported freedom of speech for Christians, Jews, atheists, Muslims, Jehovah Witnesses, reds, pinks, blacks, beatniks, peaceniks and radical rightists.
9 June 1963, Oregonian (Portland, OR), “Failure Of Peace Groups Laid To Lack Of ‘Main Street’ Tie” by Advance News Service, pg. A3, col. 1:
WASHINGTON—A distinctly “peacenik” crowd of demonstrators stood with their far-out slogans aloft on a Greenwich Village side-street as a thin, intense young man in a tight black suit harangued them from his perch on a no parking signpost.
Reason Magazine
Peaceniks Should Love Murder Drones, Say Drone Enthusiasts
Mike Riggs | January 13, 2012
For the month of January, Cato Unbound is probing the West’s use of murder drones. The lead essay is by Notre Dame’s David Cortwright, who begins by asking “whether drone technology makes war more likely.”