DESPOTIC

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does despotic mean? 

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

1. belonging to or having the characteristics of a despot

2. ruled by or characteristic of a despot

3. characteristic of an absolute ruler or absolute rule; having absolute sovereignty

  Familiarity information: DESPOTIC used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DESPOTIC (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Belonging to or having the characteristics of a despot

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Synonyms:

despotic; despotical

Pertainym:

despot (a cruel and oppressive dictator)

Derivation:

despot (a cruel and oppressive dictator)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Ruled by or characteristic of a despot

Context example:

his administration was arrogant and despotic

Similar:

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

Derivation:

despot (a cruel and oppressive dictator)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Characteristic of an absolute ruler or absolute rule; having absolute sovereignty

Synonyms:

authoritarian; autocratic; despotic; dictatorial; tyrannic; tyrannical

Context example:

a tyrannical government

Similar:

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

Derivation:

despot (a cruel and oppressive dictator)

 Context examples 

Now I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formal promise or entered into any engagement; and this language was all much too hard and much too despotic for the occasion.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It was a time of war, when England with an army and navy composed only of those who volunteered to fight because they had fighting blood in them, had to encounter, as they would now have to encounter, a power which could by despotic law turn every citizen into a soldier.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

When I had groped my way, blindly, through these difficulties, and had mastered the alphabet, which was an Egyptian Temple in itself, there then appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary characters; the most despotic characters I have ever known; who insisted, for instance, that a thing like the beginning of a cobweb, meant expectation, and that a pen-and-ink sky-rocket, stood for disadvantageous.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The well-known face was there: stern, relentless as ever—there was that peculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat raised, imperious, despotic eyebrow.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

His chest heaved once, as if his large heart, weary of despotic constriction, had expanded, despite the will, and made a vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in his iron silence all he felt towards me: the disappointment of an austere and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected submission—the disapprobation of a cool, inflexible judgment, which has detected in another feelings and views in which it has no power to sympathise: in short, as a man, he would have wished to coerce me into obedience: it was only as a sincere Christian he bore so patiently with my perversity, and allowed so long a space for reflection and repentance.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)