From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishdictatorshipdic‧ta‧tor‧ship /dɪkˈteɪtəʃɪp $ -ˈteɪtər-/ ●○○ noun 1 [countable, uncountable]PG government by a ruler who has complete power► see thesaurus at government2 [countable]PG a country that is ruled by one person who has complete power
Examples from the Corpus
dictatorship• Britain in mid-1979 was unlikely to lurch into any drastic transformation, let alone a dictatorship.• This was to have a United Nations as a world policeman, able to intervene against dictatorships which threaten other countries.• How do we explain the rise in European dictatorship in the 1930s?• Is dictatorship more easily defined than democracy?• Everything is now in place for a rigged election that seems likely to usher in a military dictatorship.• In 1971, the country's 10 year military dictatorship came to an end.• The political difficulties included the moral dictatorship of Pandit Nehru and his family, which posed formidable succession problems.• That is carried to such an extreme that we will recognise dictatorships and ignore the coups which bring some despots to power.• Ethiopia's dictatorship was toppled by Eritrean and Ethiopian rebels.• Residence permits are a remnant of Stalin's dictatorship.• Despite the dictatorship, major unrest broke out.• Press photos by Nancy Urrut a dating from 1980 give an appalling view into what daily life in the dictatorship looked like.• The country has been moving toward dictatorship. 