A member of one of the two big political groups in Britain in the 1700s and early 1800s — the other being the Tories. Whigs stood for limiting the power of the king or queen and strengthening Parliament, and they came to be linked with religious tolerance, trade, and later with reform. In the 1830s they gradually became the Liberal Party, so the name faded out of live politics. Because it is the name of a group, it takes a capital W. Two extra things a reader needs. In American history, "Whig" names a different party — the one that opposed President Andrew Jackson in the 1830s–50s, which included Abraham Lincoln before he became a Republican. And "Whig history" is a term historians still use, half as a criticism, for telling the past as a smooth march of progress towards the present. The word began as an insult thrown at Scottish rebels, and both sides' names — Whig and Tory — started that way; the parties later wore them with pride.