TORY

noun (plural Tories) Etymology: Irish tóraidhe outlaw, robber, from Middle Irish tóir pursuit Date: 1646 a dispossessed Irishman subsisting as an outlaw chiefly in the 17th century, bandit , outlaw , 3. a member or supporter of a major British political group of the 18th and early 19th centuries favoring at first the Stuarts and later royal authority and the established church and seeking to preserve the traditional political structure and defeat parliamentary reform, conservative 1b, an American upholding the cause of the British Crown against the supporters of colonial independence during the American Revolution ; loyalist , an extreme conservative especially in political and economic principles, ~ adjective