| / English Dictionary |
TYRANT
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A cruel and oppressive dictator
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("tyrant" is a kind of...):
dictator; potentate (a ruler who is unconstrained by law)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "tyrant"):
czar (a person having great power)
Derivation:
tyrannize (rule or exercise power over (somebody) in a cruel and autocratic manner)
tyrannize (rule a country as a tyrant)
tyrannous (marked by unjust severity or arbitrary behavior)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Any person who exercises power in a cruel way
Example:
his father was a tyrant
Classified under:
Nouns denoting people
Hypernyms ("tyrant" is a kind of...):
individual; mortal; person; somebody; someone; soul (a human being)
Derivation:
tyrannous (marked by unjust severity or arbitrary behavior)
Sense 3
Meaning:
In ancient Greece, a ruler who had seized power without legal right to it
Classified under:
Nouns denoting people
Hypernyms ("tyrant" is a kind of...):
ruler; swayer (a person who rules or commands)
Instance hyponyms:
Dionysius; Dionysius the Elder (the tyrant of Syracuse who fought the Carthaginians (430-367 BC))
Context examples:
Mr. Murdstone, she said, shaking her finger at him, you were a tyrant to the simple baby, and you broke her heart.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
He had made his name as the most lewd and bloodthirsty tyrant that had ever governed any country with a pretence to civilization.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I chiefly fed mine eyes with beholding the destroyers of tyrants and usurpers, and the restorers of liberty to oppressed and injured nations.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Violent as he had seemed in his despair, he, in truth, loved me far too well and too tenderly to constitute himself my tyrant: he would have given me half his fortune, without demanding so much as a kiss in return, rather than I should have flung myself friendless on the wide world.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Instantly, Sir What's-his-name recovered himself, pitched the tyrant out of the window, and turned to join the lady, victorious, but with a bump on his brow, found the door locked, tore up the curtains, made a rope ladder, got halfway down when the ladder broke, and he went headfirst into the moat, sixty feet below.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
It is your time now, little tyrant, but it will be mine presently; and when once I have fairly seized you, to have and to hold, I'll just—figuratively speaking—attach you to a chain like this (touching his watch-guard).
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me; and Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
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