DEMOCRATIC

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Democratic mean? 

• DEMOCRATIC (adjective)
  The adjective DEMOCRATIC has 3 senses:

1. characterized by or advocating or based upon the principles of democracy or social equality

2. belong to or relating to the Democratic Party

3. representing or appealing to or adapted for the benefit of the people at large

  Familiarity information: DEMOCRATIC used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DEMOCRATIC (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Characterized by or advocating or based upon the principles of democracy or social equality

Context example:

a democratic scorn for bloated dukes and lords

Similar:

antiauthoritarian (opposed to authoritarianism)

classless; egalitarian (favoring social equality)

parliamentary (having the supreme legislative power resting with a body of cabinet ministers chosen from and responsible to the legislature or parliament)

parliamentary (in accord with rules and customs of a legislative or deliberative assembly)

participatory (affording the opportunity for individual participation)

popular (carried on by or for the people (or citizens) at large)

representative (being or characteristic of government by representation in which citizens exercise power through elected officers and representatives)

republican (having the supreme power lying in the body of citizens entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them or characteristic of such government)

Also:

elected; elective (subject to popular election)

Antonym:

undemocratic (not in agreement with or according to democratic doctrine or practice or ideals)

Derivation:

democracy (the political orientation of those who favor government by the people or by their elected representatives)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Belong to or relating to the Democratic Party

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Context example:

Democratic senator

Pertainym:

democrat (an advocate of democratic principles)

Derivation:

democracy (a political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Representing or appealing to or adapted for the benefit of the people at large

Synonyms:

democratic; popular

Context example:

popular fiction

Similar:

common (having no special distinction or quality; widely known or commonly encountered; average or ordinary or usual)

Derivation:

democracy (the doctrine that the numerical majority of an organized group can make decisions binding on the whole group)

 Context examples 

The researchers obtained blood samples from a survivor of the 1995 Ebola outbreak in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

(Experimental Ebola antibody protects monkeys, NIH)

While this affair was hanging fire, he proved that he understood the principles of the Democratic Party by winning the first prize for his essay in a similar contest.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Mr. Tudor's uncle had married an English lady who was third cousin to a living lord, and Amy regarded the whole family with great respect, for in spite of her American birth and breeding, she possessed that reverence for titles which haunts the best of us—that unacknowledged loyalty to the early faith in kings which set the most democratic nation under the sun in ferment at the coming of a royal yellow-haired laddie, some years ago, and which still has something to do with the love the young country bears the old, like that of a big son for an imperious little mother, who held him while she could, and let him go with a farewell scolding when he rebelled.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Recent Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreaks, including the 2013-2016 epidemic that ravaged West Africa and the 2018 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, highlight the need for licensed treatments for this often-deadly disease.

(Broadly acting antibodies found in plasma of Ebola survivors, National Institutes of Health)

In an investigation of 19 sites in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, scientists discovered that heavily deforested areas leach organic carbon that is significantly older and more biodegradable than the organic carbon leached from densely forested regions.

(Tropical soil disturbance could be hidden source of carbon dioxide, National Science Foundation)

Yet he betrayed a democratic fondness for Wagner, and the "Tannhauser" overture, when she had given him the clew to it, claimed him as nothing else she played.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)