dictator

noun dic·ta·tor \ ˈdik-ˌtā-tər , dik-ˈ \

|Updated on: 20 Jun 2018

1 a : a person granted absolute emergency power; especially, history : one appointed by the senate (see senate 1a) of ancient Rome

b : one holding complete autocratic control : a person with unlimited governmental power

c : one ruling in an absolute (see absolute 2) and often oppressive way

fascist dictators

2 : one who says or reads something for a person to transcribe or for a machine to record : one that dictates (see ¹dictate 1)

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Examples of dictator in a Sentence

The country was ruled by a military dictator.
the dictator had a fierce stranglehold on the country, keeping its people in poverty and ignorance

Recent Examples of dictator from the Web

The party of spreading freedom and never negotiating with dictators is now full of praise for chumming it up with Kim Jong-un.

— eric levitz, Daily Intelligencer, "Trump Has Not Transformed the Republican Party – Yet," 14 June 2018
The tweet came as Trump was en route from his high-stakes, historic summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un, which delivered questionable results.

— mike miller, PEOPLE.com, "Donald Trump Calls Robert De Niro a 'Very Low IQ Individual' in Tweet with Glaring Typo," 12 June 2018
That the president had flown halfway around the world to meet the ruthless dictator of a nuclear-armed nation alone spoke volumes symbolically.

— author: dan balz, Anchorage Daily News, "Analysis: Summit’s outcome rests on substance, not symbolism," 12 June 2018
One is a septuagenarian American president, the other a millennial North Korean dictator.

— philip rucker, The Seattle Times, "The ‘dotard’ meets ‘Little Rocket Man’: Trump and Kim are adversaries with many similarities," 10 June 2018
President Trump wrote to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un on Thursday, with all the pent-up anguish and faux dignity of a teenage girl in the throes of first love.

— lynn yaeger, Vogue, "In Washington, U.S. and North Korea Summit Merch Goes on Deep Discount, As Donald Trump’s Branding Apparently Thrives," 27 May 2018
The real prize, a summit in Singapore, collapsed in an angry war of words with the North Korean dictator.

— matt viser, BostonGlobe.com, "How leaving the N.K. summit could be part of Trump’s strategy," 24 May 2018
The Argentine dictator even reportedly entered the visitors’ dressing room before the match to wish them luck.

— SI.com, "World Cup Countdown: 10 Weeks to Go - The World Cries Foul as Peru Crumble Against Argentina in 1978," 13 Apr. 2018
The planned summit next month between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un came to a very abrupt end this morning with a letter from Trump calling it off.

— ella nilsen, Vox, "Vox Sentences: The North Korea summit that wasn’t," 25 May 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'dictator.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Origin and Etymology of dictator

Middle English dictatour, borrowed from Latin dictātor, from dictāre "to say repeatedly, speak aloud words to be transcribed by another, issue as an order" + -tor, agent suffix — more at ¹dictate

Note: Though formally a derivative of dictāre, the noun dictātor is attested perhaps two centuries earlier in Latin and may be an independent formation, though the model for it is not clear; the sense "issue as an order" of dictāre may reflect influence of dictātor. The form tictator used in the Old English translation of Orosius's Historiae Adversum Paganos had no subsequent use.

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: before 12th century

in the meaning defined at sense 1a

See Words from the same year