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TYRANNY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.)
Synonyms:
absolutism; authoritarianism; Caesarism; despotism; dictatorship; monocracy; one-man rule; shogunate; Stalinism; totalitarianism; tyranny
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Hypernyms ("tyranny" is a kind of...):
autarchy; autocracy (a political system governed by a single individual)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "tyranny"):
police state (a country that maintains repressive control over the people by means of police (especially secret police))
Sense 2
Meaning:
Dominance through threat of punishment and violence
Synonyms:
absolutism; despotism; tyranny
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("tyranny" is a kind of...):
ascendance; ascendancy; ascendence; ascendency; control; dominance (the state that exists when one person or group has power over another)
Derivation:
tyrannic; tyrannical (characteristic of an absolute ruler or absolute rule; having absolute sovereignty)
tyrannical (marked by unjust severity or arbitrary behavior)
Context examples:
To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced that the general's unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
We talk about the tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannize over them too; we are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds well.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
However I might have expressed my comprehension of it at that time, if I had been called upon, I nevertheless did clearly comprehend in my own way, that it was another name for tyranny; and for a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil's humour, that was in them both.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
