Before the 1790s, ‘democracy’ was rarely invoked in British political discourse. The word had negative associations, and there were many other ways of framing political challenges. The first variant of the word to catch on was ‘democrat’, which after the French Revolution – following Edmund Burke's lead – achieved currency as a term of abuse directed against the Revolution's British sympathizers. Some of these came to adopt the identity ascribed to them, at least privately and playfully; in public they were more cautious. Even self-avowed democrats did not aim to institute ‘democracy’, a concept which lacked clear modern content. Cognates of democracy featured in British political discourse in this era less as concepts than as ‘fighting words’.