as in dictatorship
a system of government in which the ruler has unlimited power
a popular uprising replaced that nation's tyranny with freedom and democracy
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of tyranny
In the pic, Garfield plays a legendary leader of a ferocious rebellion against the tyranny of King Richard II.
—
Justin Kroll, Deadline, 4 Sep. 2025
The square was built on the location of the 1789 uprising and where the Bastille prison, an emblem of tyranny, once stood and was dismantled.
—Sofia Celeste, Footwear News, 3 Sep. 2025
Not every encounter or exchange needs to entail a lesson in semantics, or the tyranny of cultural sensitivity, or the dominance of white males in academia and everywhere else.
—Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 29 Aug. 2025
After decades of tyranny, Assad’s murderous regime fell in December 2024, turning Middle East geopolitics upside down.
—Ariel Cohen, Forbes.com, 26 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for tyranny
Justin Kroll, Deadline, 4 Sep. 2025
The square was built on the location of the 1789 uprising and where the Bastille prison, an emblem of tyranny, once stood and was dismantled.
—Sofia Celeste, Footwear News, 3 Sep. 2025
Not every encounter or exchange needs to entail a lesson in semantics, or the tyranny of cultural sensitivity, or the dominance of white males in academia and everywhere else.
—Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 29 Aug. 2025
After decades of tyranny, Assad’s murderous regime fell in December 2024, turning Middle East geopolitics upside down.
—Ariel Cohen, Forbes.com, 26 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for tyranny
Recent Examples of Synonyms for tyranny
Noun
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No, a dictatorship is not the same as democracy.—
Zac Ntim,
Deadline,
5 Sep. 2025
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First, the Chavist regime of Nicolás Maduro is not operating like a real state or even a classic dictatorship.—
Kristina Foltz,
MSNBC Newsweek,
4 Sep. 2025
Noun
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That those women and men who died to end slavery, to win basic rights, to win the vote, to dethrone monarchs and destroy the ancien régime, to fight Czarism and fascism and Nazism and imperialism and apartheid, were in some way our moral betters.—
Jack Sheehan
September 4,
Literary Hub,
4 Sep. 2025
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The rise of fascism encroaches on her like a disease, culminating in a personal invitation from Mussolini himself, but we’re dealt countless scenes of Eleonora’s psychosis before we’re granted a contextual explanation of what feeds it.—
Blake Simons,
IndieWire,
3 Sep. 2025
Noun
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The Bashar Assad regime’s collapse inspired a wave of optimism about despotism turning into democracy.—
Daniel DePetris,
Chicago Tribune,
26 Aug. 2025
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If not for our nation’s First Amendment, our country could quickly resemble a despotism where police forces attack reporters and quash news reports that diverge from the official view.—
The Editorial Board,
Oc Register,
15 July 2025
Noun
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Assayas addressed the timeliness of the Putin story in a world where autocracy seems to be relentlessly on the rise.—
Patrick Brzeski,
HollywoodReporter,
31 Aug. 2025
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Among Putin’s various motivations for launching this war, foremost is the threatening alternative that Ukraine’s open political system presents to his own autocracy.—
NATALIYA GUMENYUK,
Foreign Affairs,
29 Aug. 2025
Noun
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Eclectic traditionalism, remade on an elephantine scale, is the style of totalitarianism.—
Adam Gopnik,
New Yorker,
6 Sep. 2025
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Brzezinski would dedicate his academic and professional life to studying and undermining the forces of totalitarianism and authoritarianism that had overtaken his homeland during his childhood.—
Niall Ferguson,
Foreign Affairs,
19 Aug. 2025
Noun
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Democrats, on the other hand, are blasting this move as a sign of impending authoritarianism and call it an unprecedented overreach in presidential authority.—
Rachel Schilke,
The Washington Examiner,
29 Aug. 2025
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That, in fact, political authoritarianism was more likely to lead to modernization and advancement.—
Eric Berger,
ArsTechnica,
18 Aug. 2025
Noun
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The idea that executive absolutism can be stopped by a single district judge is a romantic but inaccurate one.—
George Liebmann,
Baltimore Sun,
2 July 2025
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Its champions gradually came to reinterpret the end of licensing as a natural consequence of the Revolution of 1688—part of the progression from tyrannical absolutism to parliamentary monarchy.—
Fara Dabhoiwala,
Harpers Magazine,
4 June 2025
Cite this Entry
“Tyranny.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/tyranny. Accessed 11 Sep. 2025.
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