tyranny
tyr·anny (tir′ə nē)
noun pl. -·nies
- the office, authority, government, or jurisdiction of a tyrant, or absolute ruler
- oppressive and unjust government; despotism
- very cruel and unjust use of power or authority
- harshness; rigor; severity
- a tyrannical act
Etymology: ME tirannie < OFr < ML tyrannia < Gr
tyranny
n.
Preposition: of
- replicators: We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators ' .
- correctness: Worst of all, New Labor have created a tyranny of political correctness.
- majority: We should defer to the tyranny of the majority.
- print: A new(-ish ) essay of mine The tyranny of print is hosted there, and will shortly be joined by some new PDF collections.
- minority: The tyranny of the minority in the short-term would lead to democracy for the majority in the long-term.
- distance: Notwithstanding the authors maintain that distance education is the way forward to addressing the problems of the tyranny of distance.
Converse of object
- overthrow: This is only common sense and most of us would agree that to overthrow tyranny, force must be sometimes be used.
- resist: In 1939, what we risked was our own lives and safety in resisting a tyranny.
- escape: They all dreamed of escaping the tyranny of editors, deadlines, the daily grind to Blackfriars Station.
- oppose: He experienced the consequences of his choice in opposing tyranny in his own special way, for the remainder of his life.
- impose: It is tyranny imposed by a military machine of immense power; it is tyranny by an utterly ruthless despotism.
- overcome: Edward overcame the tyranny of his guardians at the age of seventeen and then set about developing a new form of awe-inspiring chivalric kingship.
Adjective modifier
- monstrous: Monstrous tyrannies have been overthrown, but there is still no food in the shops.
- Nazi: He has no illusions about the true price of defeat having seen first hand what life under Nazi tyranny means.
- cruel: Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
- petty: She had always resisted the petty tyranny of the kitchen, its perfect order and shiny regimen, the confusing array of spices.
- fascist: He also supported the fascist tyranny of Pilsudski in Poland, while writing erudite encyclicals on moral and political principles.
- imperialist: They see every foul device of imperialist tyranny employed against them with at any rate the passive acquiescence of the British working class.
Noun used with modifier
Of all tyrannies in history, the Bolshevik tyranny is the worst, the most destructive, the most degrading. Every British and French soldier killed last year was really done to death by Lenin and Trotskyönot in fair war, but by the treacherous desertion of an ally without parallel in the history of the world.
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
They that are discontented under monarchy call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy call it oligarchy; so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy call it anarchy, which signifies the want of government; and yet I think no man believes that want of government is any new kind of government.
He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle to steady his fellow countrymen and hearten those Europeans upon whom the long dark night of tyranny had descended.
Then let us have our libertyagain, And challenge to yourselves no sovereignty. You came not in the world without our pain, Make that a bar against your cruelty; Your fault being greater, why should you disdain Our being your equals, free from tyranny?
It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.
We are fighting in the quarrel of civilization against barbarism, of liberty against tyranny.Germany has become a menace to the whole world. She is the most dangerous enemy of liberty now existing.
A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.
Slow tyranny of moonlight, moonlight loved And changed.
I have struggled against tyranny. I didn't do that in order to substitute one tyranny with another.
Taxation without representation is tyranny.
Where laws end, tyranny begins.
The function of music isto release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.
TheTyranny of Distance.
Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of 'the rat race' is not yet final.
Tyranny sets up its own echo-chamber.
Bemercifuluntome,OGod, be mercifuluntome, for my soul trusteth in thee: and under the shadow of thy wings shall be my refuge, until this tyranny be over-past.
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
Amid the wreck and the misery of nations it is our just exaltation that we have continued superior to all that ambition or despotism could effect; and our still higher exaltation ought to be that we provide not only for our own safety but hold out a prospect for nations now bending under the yoke of tyranny of what the exertions of a free people can effect.
Browse dictionary entries near tyranny
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