Word.ws English Dictionary

despotisms

despotisms is the plural of despotism.

Meaning of despotism

Noun

despotism (countable and uncountable, plural despotisms)

  1. Government by a despot or despots: rule by a singular authority, either a single person or a tight-knit group, which rules with absolute power, especially in a cruel and oppressive way.
    • The iron hand of despotism has quenched the last spark of liberty; hunted down like a wild beast, I am watching an opportunity to fly my degraded and enslaved country.1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter VII, in Romance and Reality. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 136

Questions about despotisms

What is despotisms the plural of?
Despotisms is the plural of despotism.

Words near despotisms in the dictionary

  1. despotically
  2. despoticalness
  3. despotick
  4. despoticly
  5. despotism
  6. despotisms
  7. despotist
  8. despotists
  9. despotize
  10. despotized
  11. despotizes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: despotisms (page history and authors); despotism (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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