DOMINION

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Dominion mean? 

• DOMINION (noun)
  The noun DOMINION has 3 senses:

1. dominance or power through legal authority

2. a region marked off for administrative or other purposes

3. one of the self-governing nations in the British Commonwealth

  Familiarity information: DOMINION used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DOMINION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Dominance or power through legal authority

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

dominion; rule

Context example:

the rule of Caesar

Hypernyms ("dominion" is a kind of...):

ascendance; ascendancy; ascendence; ascendency; control; dominance (the state that exists when one person or group has power over another)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "dominion"):

paramountcy (the state of being paramount; the highest rank or authority)

raj (British dominion over India (1757-1947))

reign; sovereignty (royal authority; the dominion of a monarch)

suzerainty (the position or authority of a suzerain)

Derivation:

dominate (be in control)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A region marked off for administrative or other purposes

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

district; dominion; territorial dominion; territory

Hypernyms ("dominion" is a kind of...):

region (a large indefinite location on the surface of the Earth)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "dominion"):

mandate; mandatory (a territory surrendered by Turkey or Germany after World War I and put under the tutelage of some other European power until they are able to stand by themselves)

administrative district; administrative division; territorial division (a district defined for administrative purposes)

British East Africa (the former British territories of eastern Africa, including Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, and Zanzibar)

British West Africa (the former British territories of western Africa, including Nigeria, Cameroon, Gambia, Togo, Sierra Leone, and the Gold Coast)

trust territory; trusteeship (a dependent country; administered by another country under the supervision of the United Nations)

possession (a territory that is controlled by a ruling state)

associated state; protectorate (a state or territory partly controlled by (but not a possession of) a stronger state but autonomous in internal affairs; protectorates are established by treaty)

jurisdiction (in law; the territory within which power can be exercised)

goldfield (a district where gold is mined)

community; residential area; residential district (a district where people live; occupied primarily by private residences)

palatinate (a territory under the jurisdiction of a count palatine)

enclave (an enclosed territory that is culturally distinct from the foreign territory that surrounds it)

development (a district that has been developed to serve some purpose)

congressional district (a territorial division of a state; entitled to elect one member to the United States House of Representatives)

city district (a district of a town or city)

border district; borderland; march; marchland (district consisting of the area on either side of a border or boundary of a country or an area)

Instance hyponyms:

Galloway (a district in southwestern Scotland)

Yukon; Yukon Territory (a territory in northwestern Canada; site of the Klondike gold rush in the 1890s)

Lothian Region (a district in southeast central Scotland (south side of the Firth of Forth) and the location of Edinburgh)

East Malaysia (the part of Malaysia that is on the island of Borneo)

Malaya; Peninsular Malaysia; West Malaysia (the region of Malaysia on the Malay Peninsula; shares a land border with Thailand to the north)

KwaZulu-Natal; Natal (a region of eastern South Africa on the Indian Ocean)

American Samoa; AS; Eastern Samoa (a United States territory on the eastern part of the island of Samoa)

Aragon (a region of northeastern Spain; a former kingdom that united with Castile in 1479 to form Spain (after the marriage of Ferdinand V and Isabella I))

Castile; Castilla (a region of central Spain; a former kingdom that comprised most of modern Spain and united with Aragon to form Spain in 1479)

Catalonia (a region of northeastern Spain)

Darfur (an impoverished region of western Sudan)

Kordofan (a mountainous province of central Sudan)

Louisiana Purchase (territory in the western United States purchased from France in 1803 for $15 million; extends from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada)

Lake District; Lakeland (a popular tourist area in northwestern England including England's largest lake and highest mountain)

Acre (a territory of western Brazil bordering on Bolivia and Peru)

Northern Mariana Islands; Northern Marianas (a self-governing territory comprising all of the Mariana Islands except Guam)

Northern Territory (a territory in north central Australia)

Nunavut (an Arctic territory in northern Canada created in 1999 and governed solely by the Inuit; includes the eastern part of what was the Northwest Territories and most of the islands of the Arctic Archipelago)

Northwest Territories (a large territory in northwestern Canada; part is now Nunavut)

Acadia (the French-speaking part of the Canadian Maritime Provinces)

Papal States (the temporal dominions belonging to the pope (especially in central Italy))

Boeotia (a district of ancient Greece to the northwest of Athens)

Attica (the territory of Athens in ancient Greece where the Ionic dialect was spoken)

Athos; Mount Athos (an autonomous area in northeastern Greece that is the site of several Greek Orthodox monasteries founded in the tenth century)

Palatinate; Pfalz (a territory in southwestern Germany formerly ruled by the counts palatine)

Sense 3

Meaning:

One of the self-governing nations in the British Commonwealth

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("Dominion" is a kind of...):

body politic; commonwealth; country; land; nation; res publica; state (a politically organized body of people under a single government)

 Context examples 

But it must be observed, that this island cannot move beyond the extent of the dominions below, nor can it rise above the height of four miles.

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

My feelings are not quite so evanescent, nor my memory of the past under such easy dominion as one finds to be the case with men of the world.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

The legal relation in which a person or group entity has a financial interest in, dominion of, or control over an object or property.

(Ownership, NCI Thesaurus)

One with an interest in, dominion of, or control over an object or property.

(Owner, NCI Thesaurus)

Felix conducted the fugitives through France to Lyons and across Mont Cenis to Leghorn, where the merchant had decided to wait a favourable opportunity of passing into some part of the Turkish dominions.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

In the Wild the time of a mother with her young is short; but under the dominion of man it is sometimes even shorter.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

We travel up Klondike, up Bonanza and Eldorado, over to Indian River, to Sulphur Creek, to Dominion, back across divide to Gold Bottom and to Too Much Gold, and back to Dawson.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Therefore I have no brains, and I come to you praying that you will put brains in my head instead of straw, so that I may become as much a man as any other in your dominions.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

As the days went by, other dogs came, in crates and at the ends of ropes, some docilely, and some raging and roaring as he had come; and, one and all, he watched them pass under the dominion of the man in the red sweater.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

But I had another reason, which made me less forward to enlarge his majesty’s dominions by my discoveries.

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