English

Proper noun

Thermidor ‎(plural Thermidors)

1. (historical) The eleventh month of the French Republican Calendar, from July 19 or 20 to August 18 or 19.

Noun

Thermidor ‎(plural Thermidors)

1. A counterrevolution; a coup d'état resembling the Thermidorian Reaction.
   • 2003, David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War, OUP Oxford (ISBN 9780191554582), page 329

     According to Sartre — this was a famous polemic — Camus had now made his Thermidor (counter-revolution) by attempting to stand outside or above history;

   • 2008, Martin Malia, Terence Emmons, History's Locomotives: Revolutions and the Making of the Modern World, Yale University Press (ISBN 9780300126907), page 304

     So the author, after seeking vainly between the editions of 1938 and 1965 a peg on which to hang his Thermidor, in the end gave up and labeled the Russian case "permanent revolution," without, however, explaining how this aberrant outcome of the Bolshevik fever came about.

   • 2008, Robert V. Daniels, The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia, Yale University Press (ISBN 9780300134933)

     The year —that was the beginning of the Soviet Thermidor.''43 Thus Trotsky finally recognized that a Thermidor had in fact occurred, not as an overt bourgeois coup but as a more subtle political shift within the ruling party.

   • 2009, Philip Abbott, Political Thought in America: Conversations and Debates, Fourth Edition, Waveland Press (ISBN 9781478607663), page 46

     Usually, in a Thermidor, the democratic reforms that appeared early in the revolution are wiped out along with many of the radical policies.

Related terms

• lobster thermidor

Translations

French

Noun

thermidor m ‎(plural thermidors)

1. Thermidor (the eleventh month of the French Republican Calendar)

See also

• (French Republican Calendar months) mois du calendrier républicain; vendémiaire, brumaire, frimaire, nivôse, pluviôse, ventôse, germinal, floréal, prairial, messidor, thermidor, fructidor ^{(Category: fr:Months)}