Car`bo*na"ro (?), n.; pl. Carbonari (#). [It., a coal man.]
A member of a secret political association in Italy, organized in the early part of the nineteenth centry for the purpose of changing the government into a republic.
The origin of the Carbonari is uncertain, but the society is said to have first met, in 1808, among the charcoal burners of the mountains, whose phraseology they adopted.
© Webster 1913.