TYRANNY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does tyranny mean? 

• TYRANNY (noun)
  The noun TYRANNY has 2 senses:

1. a form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.)

2. dominance through threat of punishment and violence

  Familiarity information: TYRANNY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TYRANNY (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.)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

absolutism; authoritarianism; Caesarism; despotism; dictatorship; monocracy; one-man rule; shogunate; Stalinism; totalitarianism; tyranny

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

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

absolutism; despotism; tyranny

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 

The lessons were not tender that he had learned of their tyranny and cruelty in the days of the Indian villages.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

And here I may remark, that what I underwent from Mrs. Crupp, in consequence of the tyranny she established over me, was dreadful.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I would have you bear this in mind, and give great heed to it that you may bring me word of all cartels, challenges, wrongs, tyrannies, infamies, and wronging of damsels.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

All John Reed's violent tyrannies, all his sisters' proud indifference, all his mother's aversion, all the servants' partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Immediately surrounding Mrs Musgrove were the little Harvilles, whom she was sedulously guarding from the tyranny of the two children from the Cottage, expressly arrived to amuse them.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

And as it was tyranny in any government to require the first, so it was weakness not to enforce the second: for a man may be allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to vend them about for cordials.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

What a strange, unaccountable character!—for with all these symptoms of profligacy at ten years old, she had neither a bad heart nor a bad temper, was seldom stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones, with few interruptions of tyranny; she was moreover noisy and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Having conquered the violence of his feelings, he appeared to despise himself for being the slave of passion; and quelling the dark tyranny of despair, he led me again to converse concerning myself personally.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Everything was a friend, or bore her thoughts to a friend; and though there had been sometimes much of suffering to her; though her motives had often been misunderstood, her feelings disregarded, and her comprehension undervalued; though she had known the pains of tyranny, of ridicule, and neglect, yet almost every recurrence of either had led to something consolatory: her aunt Bertram had spoken for her, or Miss Lee had been encouraging, or, what was yet more frequent or more dear, Edmund had been her champion and her friend: he had supported her cause or explained her meaning, he had told her not to cry, or had given her some proof of affection which made her tears delightful; and the whole was now so blended together, so harmonised by distance, that every former affliction had its charm.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I have no hesitation in saying, said Mr. Chillip, fortifying himself with another sip of negus, between you and me, sir, that her mother died of it—or that tyranny, gloom, and worry have made Mrs. Murdstone nearly imbecile.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)