republic

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A political order whose head of state is not a monarch and in modern times is usually a president.
2. n. A nation that has such a political order.
3. n. A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them.
4. n. A nation that has such a political order.
5. n. A specific republican government of a nation: the Fourth Republic of France.
6. n. An autonomous or partially autonomous political and territorial unit belonging to a sovereign federation.
7. n. A group of people working as equals in the same sphere or field: the republic of letters.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The commonwealth; the state.
2. n. A commonwealth; a government in which the executive power is vested in a person or persons chosen directly or indirectly by the body of citizens entitled to vote. It is distinguished from a monarchy on the one hand, and generally from a pure democracy on the other. In the latter case the mass of citizens meet and choose the executive, as is still the case in certain Swiss cantons. In a republic the executive is usually chosen indirectly, either by an electoral college as in the United States, or by the National Assembly as in France. Republics are oligarchic, as formerly Venice and Genoa, military, as ancient Rome, strongly centralized, as France, federal, as Switzerland, or, like the United States, may combine a strong central government with large individual powers for the several states in their particular affairs. See democracy.

Wiktionary

1. n. A state where sovereignty rests with the people or their representatives, rather than with a monarch or emperor; a country with no monarchy.
2. n. One of the subdivisions constituting Russia. See oblast.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. Common weal.
2. n. A state in which the sovereign power resides in the whole body of the people, and is exercised by representatives elected by them; a commonwealth. Cf. Democracy, 2.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a form of government whose head of state is not a monarch
2. n. a political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them