English Explanatory Dictionary

Butlerian jihad

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A war waged in the Duneverse by the last free humans against autonomous (“thinking”) machines; the Great Revolt.
  2. A notional large-scale and vehement opposition to and suppression of artificial intelligence.
noun
  1. Alternative letter-case form of Butlerian jihad

Word forms

Butlerian jihad Butlerian jihads

Etymology

From Butlerian + jihad (“holy war, crusade”), from the science fiction epic Dune (1965). Butlerian refers to English novelist Samuel Butler, whose 1872 work Erewhon describes a society that destroys all complex machines preemptively out of fear of their replacement by those very machines.

Related words

Erewhonian
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