big government
big government noun: governance that consists of large-scale programs, numerous departments and employees, and that entails substantial spending, especially liberal or left-wing governance which emphasizes social entitlements and regulation, and that is considered intrusive by some citizens, especially by conservatives or right-wingers.
Noun (1)
big government (uncountable)
- Governance that consists of large-scale programs, numerous departments and employees, and that entails substantial spending, especially liberal or left-wing governance which emphasizes social entitlements and regulation, and that is considered intrusive by some citizens, especially by conservatives or right-wingers
- Because he is liberal, temperate and articulate, and because he freely recognizes past Big Business abuses, Wendell L. Willkie, president of huge Commonwealth & Southern Corp., is in a class by himself as a persuasive businessman-critic of the New Deal. […] "Today it is not Big Business that we...1940 March 18, “Life on the Newsfronts of the World: Big Government”, in Life, retrieved 13 Dec 2011, page 26
- Mr. Clinton inherited a Presidency that had been downsized by Watergate and the end of the cold war. […] Two years ago he declared the end of the era of big government and embarked upon a program of bite-sized policy initiatives.1998 August 2, John M. Broder, “The Nation: Big Deal”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 11 Aug 2021, retrieved 13 Dec 2011
Noun (2) capitalized: Big Government
Big Government (uncountable)
- Alternative letter-case form of big government.
- This is why the Conservative programme for government is founded on such a radical revolt against the statist approach of the Big Government that always knows best.2010 April 17, David Cameron, “This is a radical revolt against the statist approach of Big Government”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 24 Oct 2019
Forms of big government
| alternative form | Big Government |
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Questions about big government
- What does big government mean?
- Big government means governance that consists of large-scale programs, numerous departments and employees, and that entails substantial spending, especially liberal or left-wing governance which emphasizes social entitlements and regulation, and that is considered intrusive by some citizens, especially by conservatives or right-wingers.
- What part of speech is big government?
- Big government is a noun.
Words near big government in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: big government (page history and authors); Big Government (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “big government.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/big_government. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.