constructionist

construction +‎ -ist

constructionist (comparative more constructionist, superlative most constructionist)

1. Of, pertaining to, or advocating constructionism.
   • 2015, Jane Ward, Not Gay, New York University Press, →ISBN, page 97:

     According to the constructionist approach that dominates queer scholarship, homosexuality and heterosexuality are not essential aspects of the self (biological or otherwise), but culturally and historically specific classifications used to explain and regulate sexuality and to produce docile sexual subjects.

constructionist (plural constructionists)

1. An advocate of constructionism.
   • 1988 April 9, Charley Shively, “Canada, Oh Canada!”, in Gay Community News, page 8:

     Aristotle claimed that people were by nature political animals, thus inaugurating the essentialist argument for the state. The constructionists similarly believe that the modern state is an overriding necessity, a built-in impulse that cannot be resisted any more than the St. Laurence River making its way to the sea.

2. One who puts a certain construction upon some writing or instrument, such as the United States Constitution.

   a strict constructionist; a broad constructionist

3. (obsolete) One who works in construction.
   • 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 242:

     The gap that remains in the interior will no doubt be eventually bridged over by railway communication; and thus the great continent will no longer be a terra incognita to the general world, who have hitherto only heard of the splendid country through which the railway will pass, from the reports of telegraph constructionists and overlanding parties.

• strict constructionist