autocracy

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“
Of all possible forms of government--autocracy, oligarchy, democracy--that is the lowest, that most surely bears within itself the seeds of its own inevitable ruin A.

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Definitions (8)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun Government by a single person having unlimited power; despotism.
  2. noun A country or state that is governed by a single person with unlimited power.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (3)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples (50)

  • The government was now neither one thing nor the other; it had lost the authority of an autocracy, and had not gained that of a regime based on the popular will. —  Cavour
  • But what overcame the harshness of this autocracy, and made it reasonable, was the largeness of a nature that loved men and was ever hungry for knowledge of them Sir,' said he, 'I look upon every day lost in which I do not make a new acquaintance.' —  Life of Johnson
  • When he arrived in 1827 the people of the colony were the official autocracy, the squatter autocracy (exclusives), convicts, emancipists, and a limited number of free immigrants. —  Thomas Mitchell
  • In domestic affairs the predominant note was the extreme rigour with which the King's secular autocracy, his supremacy over the (p. 400) Church, and the Church's orthodox doctrine were imposed on his subjects. —  The Project Gutenberg eBook of Henri VIII - A.F. Pollard
  • The autocracy is the apex of a military system, by which a great territory has been gathered under one control. —  Folkways A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

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autocracy:   autocracies
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (1)

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from French autocratie, from Greek αὐτοκράτεια, absolute power, from αὐτοκρατής, absolute, ruling by one's self: see autocrat.
 

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/ɔˈtɑkrəsi/
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