Gileadean

Gilead +‎ -ean

Gileadean (comparative more Gileadean, superlative most Gileadean)

1. Of, related to, or characteristic of the fictional theocratic dystopian nation of Gilead in Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel The Handmaid's Tale.
   • 1985, Margaret Atwood, “Historical Notes on The Handmaid’s Tale”, in The Handmaid's Tale, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, →ISBN, page 313:

     Strictly speaking, it was not a manuscript at all when first discovered, and bore no title. The superscription “The Handmaid’s Tale” was appended to it by Professor Wade, partly in homage to the great Geoffrey Chaucer; but those of you who know Professor Wade informally, as I do, will understand when I say that I am sure all puns were intentional, particularly that having to do with the archaic vulgar signification of the word tail; that being, to some extent, the bone, as it were, of contention, in that phase of Gileadean society of which our saga treats.

   • 1995, M. Keith Booker, A Practical Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism, page 262:

     It is certainly no accident that Offred emphasizes the large collection of books she observes in her first secret unofficial visit to the Commander's study, thus linking books directly with this serious transgression of Gileadean law.

   • 1998, John Whalen-Bridge, Political Fiction and the American Self, page 180:

     To equate the Gileadean repression of Offred's voice with Pieixoto's reconstruction of it is to narrow the set of possible meanings too much.

   • 1999, Virginia Olessen, Revisioning Women, Health and Healing: Feminist, Cultural, and Technoscience Perspectives, page 234:

     The central preoccupation of the Gileadean society is human reproduction, because most members are sterile or infertile due to the build-up of toxic wastes and nuclear fallout.

• ageladine