democracy

de·moc·ra·cy

noun \di-ˈmä-krə-sē\

plural de·moc·ra·cies

Definition of DEMOCRACY

1

a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections

2

: a political unit that has a democratic government

3

capitalized : the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the United States <from emancipation Republicanism to New Deal Democracy — C. M. Roberts>

4

: the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority

5

: the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges

Examples of DEMOCRACY

1. The nation has chosen democracy over monarchy.
2. In a democracy, every citizen should have the right to vote.
3. The company is not a democracy; decisions are made by a board of directors, not the workers.
4. There is democracy within the company.
5. Democracy, I would repeat, is the noblest form of government we have yet evolved … —Norman Mailer, New York Review of Books, 27 Mar. 2002
6. … this and the economic failures of faithful democracies in places such as India or the Anglophone Caribbean demonstrated conclusively that there was no inherent link between freedom and capitalism … —Orlando Patterson, New Republic, 8 Nov. 1999
7. Even in democracies today, crucial knowledge is available to only a few individuals … —Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, 1997

Origin of DEMOCRACY

Middle French democratie, from Late Latin democratia, from Greek dēmokratia, from dēmos + -kratia -cracy

First Known Use: 1576

Related to DEMOCRACY

Synonyms: republic, self-government, self-rule

Related Words: pure democracy; home rule, self-determination; autonomy, sovereignty (also sovranty)

Near Antonyms: despotism, dictatorship, monarchy, monocracy, totalitarianism, tyranny

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Other Government and Politics Terms

agent provocateur, agitprop, autarky, cabal, egalitarianism, federalism, hegemony, plenipotentiary, popular sovereignty, socialism

Rhymes with DEMOCRACY

autocracy, bureaucracy, Eurocracy, kleptocracy, mobocracy, plantocracy, plutocracy, slavocracy, technocracy, theocracy