anarchy

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Absence of any form of political authority.
2. n. Political disorder and confusion.
3. n. Absence of any cohesive principle, such as a common standard or purpose.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Absence or insufficiency of government; a state of society in which there is no capable supreme power, and in which the several functions of the state are performed badly or not at all; social and political confusion.
2. n. Specifically A social theory which regards the union of order with the absence of all direct government of man by man as the political ideal; absolute individual liberty. The most noted expounder of this theory was Pierre Joseph Prondhon (1809–1865), whose views have been adopted, with various modifications, by many agitators.
3. n. Confusion in general. Synonyms Anarchy, Chaos. Anarchy is an absence of government; chaos is an absence of order.

Wiktionary

1. n. The state of a society being without authoritarians or a governing body.
2. n. Anarchism; the political theory that a community is best organized by the voluntary cooperation of individuals, rather than by a government, which is regarded as being coercive by nature.
3. n. A chaotic and confusing absence of any form of political authority or government.
4. n. confusion in general; disorder

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. Absence of government; the state of society where there is no law or supreme power; a state of lawlessness; political confusion.
2. n. Hence, confusion or disorder, in general.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a state of lawlessness and disorder (usually resulting from a failure of government)