Contents.Etymology The English noun appears in use, via, from the 1290s.The word derives from tyrannus, meaning 'illegitimate ruler', and this in turn from the τύραννος tyrannos 'monarch, ruler of a '; tyrannos in its turn has a origin, perhaps from. The final -t arises in Old French by association with the present participles in -ant. Definition 'The word 'tyranny' is used with many meanings, not only by the Greeks, but throughout the tradition of the great books.' The Oxford English Dictionary offers alternative definitions: a ruler, an illegitimate ruler (a usurper), an absolute ruler (despot) or an oppressive, unjust or cruel ruler. The term is usually applied to vicious autocrats who rule their subjects by brutal methods. Oppression, injustice and cruelty do not have standardized measurements or thresholds.The Greeks defined both usurpers and those inheriting rule from usurpers as tyrants.Old words are defined by their historical usage. Biblical quotations do not use the word tyrant, but express opinions very similar to those of the Greek philosophers, citing the wickedness, cruelty and injustice of rulers.

'Like a roaring lion or a charging bear is a wicked ruler over a poor people. A ruler who lacks understanding is a cruel oppressor; but one who hates unjust gain will enjoy a long life.' Proverbs 28:15–16. 'By justice a king gives stability to the land, but one who makes heavy extractions ruins it.'

Definition of tyranny in the AudioEnglish.org Dictionary. Meaning of tyranny. What does tyranny mean? Proper usage and audio pronunciation (plus IPA phonetic transcription) of the word tyranny. Information about tyranny in the AudioEnglish.org dictionary, synonyms and antonyms. Definition of tyranny. What does tyranny mean? Meaning of tyranny. Tyranny synonyms, pronunciation, spelling and more from Free Dictionary.

Proverbs 29:4The Greek philosophers stressed the quality of rule rather than legitimacy or absolutism. 'Both Plato and Aristotle speak of the king as a good monarch and the tyrant as a bad one. Both say that monarchy, or rule by a single man, is royal when it is for the welfare of the ruled and tyrannical when it serves only the interest of the ruler. Both make lawlessness – either a violation of existing laws or government by personal fiat without settled laws – a mark of tyranny.' Enlightenment philosophers seemed to define tyranny by its associated characteristics. 'The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.' In a Philosophical Dictionary.

'Where Law ends Tyranny begins.' Locke in Two Treatises of GovernmentBad results are relative. Authoritarian rule might be beneficial (like with of ) or of limited lasting harm to the country (like with of ). Those who list or rank tyrants can provide definitions and criteria for comparison or acknowledge subjectivity.

Comparative criteria may include checklists or body counts. Accounting for deaths in war is problematic – war can build empires or defend the populace – it also keeps winning tyrants in power.' Ch'in Shih-huang is the first emperor of China. He united seven separate kingdoms into a single nation. He built the Great Wall and was buried with the terra-cotta soldiers.

The Chinese have mixed feelings about him. They're proud of the nation he created, but he was a maniacal tyrant.' -Oppressive leaders have held states together (, ).A modern tyrant might be objectively defined by proven violation of international criminal law such as. Early history The state is the product of civilization. Agriculture allowed greater concentrations of people which lead to more conflict. Political and military leaders arose to manage conflicts.

All leaders were once tyrants in their own ways. 'The very essence of politics in agrarian civilizations was, by our contemporary democratic standards, tyrannical'. Eventually alternative forms and methods of government arose which allowed belated definitions and criticism.Historical forms. A of, who became known as the after they killed and were the preeminent symbol ofHistory has labeled a set of ancient and leaders as tyrants. History remembers the rulers, their rises, methods, and ends and the environment in which they ruled.

Ancient political commentators Plato and Aristotle lived late in the period of many tyrants. They had monarchies and democracies for comparison. The historical definition is best understood from their historical perspective.In, tyrants were influential opportunists that came to power by securing the support of different factions of a.

The word tyrannos, possibly pre-Greek, or eastern in origin, then carried no ethical censure; it simply referred to anyone, good or bad, who obtained executive power in a by unconventional means. Support for the tyrants came from the growing middle class and from the peasants who had no land or were in debt to the wealthy landowners. It is true that they had no legal right to rule, but the people preferred them over kings or the.The Greek tyrants stayed in power by using mercenary soldiers from outside of their respective city-state. To mock tyranny, wrote that the strangest thing to see is 'an aged tyrant' meaning that tyrants do not have the public support to survive for long.Aesymnetes An (plural aesymnetai) had similar scope of power to the tyrant, such as (c.

640–568 BC), and was elected for life or for a specified period by a city-state in a time of crisis – the only difference being that the aesymnetes was a constitutional office and were comparable to the. Magistrates in some city-states were also called aesymnetai.Populism Greek tyranny grew out of the struggle of the under classes against the, or against priest-kings where archaic traditions and mythology sanctioned hereditary and/or traditional rights to rule. Popular generally installed tyrants, who often became or remained popular rulers, at least in the early part of their reigns. See also: Roman tyrants Roman historians like, and often spoke of 'tyranny' in opposition to 'liberty'. Tyranny was associated with imperial rule and those rulers who usurped too much authority from the. Those who were advocates of 'liberty' tended to be pro-Republic and pro-Senate. For instance, regarding and his assassins, Suetonius wrote:Therefore the plots which had previously been formed separately, often by groups of two or three, were united in a general conspiracy, since even the populace no longer were pleased with present conditions, but both secretly and openly rebelled at his tyranny and cried out for defenders of their liberty.Citizens of the empire were circumspect in identifying tyrants.

S head and hands were cut off and nailed to the rostrum of the Senate to remind everyone of the perils of speaking out against tyranny.' There has since been a tendency to discuss tyranny in the abstract while limiting examples of tyrants to ancient Greek rulers. Philosophers have been more expressive than historians.Josephus identified tyrants in Biblical history (in Antiquities of the Jews) including, the. He also identified some later tyrants.In the classics Tyranny is considered an important subject, one of the 'Great Ideas' of Western thought. The classics contain many references to tyranny and its causes, effects, methods, practitioners, alternatives. They consider tyranny from historical, religious, ethical, political and fictional perspectives.

'If any point in political theory is indisputable, it would seem to be that tyranny is the worst corruption of government – a vicious misuse of power and a violent abuse of human beings who are subject to it.' While this may represent a consensus position among the classics, it is not unanimous – dissented, claiming no objective distinction, such as being vicious or virtuous, existed among monarchs. 'They that are discontented under monarchy, call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy, call it oligarchy: so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy, call it anarchy.' (in Leviathan)Dante mentioned tyrants ('who laid hold on blood and plunder') in the seventh level of Hell (Divine Comedy) where they are submerged in boiling blood. These included and the Hun who shared the region with highway robbers.conflates all rule by a single person (whom he generally refers to as a 'prince') with 'tyranny,' regardless of the legitimacy of that rule, in his.

He also identifies liberty with regimes. Sometimes he calls leaders of republics 'princes'.

He never uses the word in. He also does not share in the traditional view of tyranny, and in his Discourses he sometimes explicitly acts as an advisor to tyrants., as well as the, became generally quite wary of many people seeking to implement a popular coup. Portrays the struggle of one such anti-tyrannical Roman, in his play.In Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I, Chapter III, Augustus was shown to assume the power of a tyrant while sharing power with the reformed senate. 'After a decent resistance, the crafty tyrant submitted to the orders of the senate; and consented to receive the government of the provinces, and the general command of the Roman armies.' Emperors 'humbly professed themselves the accountable ministers of the senate, whose supreme decrees they dictated and obeyed.' The Roman Empire 'may be defined as an absolute monarchy disguised by the forms of a commonwealth.' Roman emperors were deified.

Gibbons called emperors tyrants and their rule tyranny. His definitions in the chapter were related to the absolutism of power alone – not oppression, injustice or cruelty.

He ignored the appearance of shared rule.Enlightenment. The French people demanding destitution of the Tyran onIn the, thinkers applied the word tyranny to the system of governance that had developed around. Specifically, as part of his argument against the ' in his book defines it this way: 'Tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to; and this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private, separate advantage.' Locke's concept of tyranny influenced the writers of subsequent generations who developed the concept of tyranny as counterpoint to ideas of. Referred to the tyranny of in the.Lists of tyrants Lists include:. numbering several hundred plus those of Syracuse.

numbering about 20. 100 throughout history, including 40 from the 20th century. 13 20th century tyrants.

30 tyrants of the late 20th century. 20 tyrants of the early 21st centuryThere are also numerous book titles which identify tyrants by name or circumstances.Among English rulers, several have been identified as tyrants by book title: (who signed the Magna Carta),. Methods of obtaining and retaining power The path of a tyrant can appear easy and pleasant (for all but the aristocracy).

A 20th-century historian said:Hence the road to power in Greece commercial cities was simple: to attack the aristocracy, defend the poor, and come to an understanding with the middle classes. Arrived at power, the dictator abolished debts, or confiscated large estates, taxed the rich to finance public works, or otherwise redistributed the overconcentrated wealth; and while attaching the masses to himself through such measures, he secured the support of the business community by promoting trade with state coinage and commercial treaties, and by raising the social prestige of the bourgeoisie. Forced to depend upon popularity instead of hereditary power, the dictatorships for the most part kept out of war, supported religion, maintained order, promoted morality, favored the higher status of women, encouraged the arts, and lavished revenues upon the beautification of their cities. And they did all these things, in many cases, while preserving the forms of popular government, so that even under despotism the people learned the ways of liberty.

When the dictatorship of the tyrant had served to destroy the aristocracy the people destroyed the dictatorship; and only a few changes were needed to make democracy of freemen a reality as well as a form.Ancient Greek philosophers (who were aristocrats) were far more critical in reporting the methods of tyrants. Relic rescue cheats. The justification for ousting a tyrant was absent from the historian's description but was central to the philosophers.Obtaining In the, stated: 'The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness.

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector'.Tyrants either inherit the position from a previous ruler, rise up the ranks in the military/party or seize power as entrepreneurs. Early texts called only the entrepreneurs tyrants, distinguishing them from 'bad kings'. Such tyrants may act as renters, rather than owners, of the state.The political methods of obtaining power were occasionally supplemented by theater or force. Peisistratus of Athens blamed self-inflicted wounds on enemies to justify a bodyguard which he used to seize power. He later appeared with a woman dressed as a goddess to suggest divine sanction of his rule. The third time he used mercenaries to seize and retain power.

Retaining Lengthy recommendations of methods were made to tyrants by Aristotle (in Politics for example) and (in ). These are, in general, force and fraud.

They include hiring bodyguards, stirring up wars to smother dissent, purges, assassinations, and unwarranted searches and seizures. Aristotle suggested an alternative means of retaining power – ruling justly.The methods of tyrants to retain power include placating world opinion by staging, using or threatening to use violence, and seeking popular support by appeals to and claims that conditions have improved. See also. – propaganda technique and logical fallacy. – The situation in which decisions made by a majority place its interests above those and at the expense of an individual or minority group.

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– Form of government. – Political leader who possesses absolute power. – Authoritarian form of government.References.

Dictionary entry details

• TYRANNY(noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

absolutism; authoritarianism; Caesarism; despotism; dictatorship; monocracy; one-man rule; shogunate; Stalinism; totalitarianism; tyranny

Hypernyms ('tyranny' is a kind of..):

autarchy; autocracy (a political system governed by a single individual)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of 'tyranny'):

police state (a country that maintains repressive control over the people by means of police (especially secret police))

Sense 2

Meaning:

Dominance through threat of punishment and violence

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

absolutism; despotism; tyranny

Hypernyms ('tyranny' is a kind of..):

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

Derivation:

tyrannic; tyrannical (characteristic of an absolute ruler or absolute rule; having absolute sovereignty)

tyrannical (marked by unjust severity or arbitrary behavior)