dirigiste

/dɪɹəˈʒist/

dirigiste adjective: controlled or guided by a central authority, as in an economy.

Adjective

dirigiste (comparative more dirigiste, superlative most dirigiste)

Controlled or guided by a central authority, as in an economy.
- The repeated crises in dirigiste systems are in essence crises of information since the abolition of the market leaves the central planner bereft of that economic knowledge which is required for harmony.1982, Norman Barry, “The Tradition of Spontaneous Order”, in Literature of Liberty, volume 5, number 2, page 10
- Certainly, popular demands and the force of circumstances have already pushed the Biden administration towards a dirigiste programme of government-led recovery that has no real precedent since the 1960s.2022, Jeremy Gilbert, Alex Williams, “Strange Times”, in Hegemony Now, London: Verso, →ISBN, part III

dirigiste (plural dirigistes)

An advocate or practitioner of dirigisme.
- Warren wants to centralize economic decisions, creating a Department of Economic Development — a top-down council of government dirigistes.2019 July 1, David Brooks, “Moderates Have the Better Story”, in The New York Times

Borrowed from French dirigiste, from diriger (“to run, to direct”), from Latin dirigere (“to direct, to steer”).

What does dirigiste mean?: Dirigiste means controlled or guided by a central authority, as in an economy.
What part of speech is dirigiste?: Dirigiste can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce dirigiste?: Dirigiste is pronounced /dɪɹəˈʒist/ (US).

Adapted from Wiktionary: dirigiste (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-dirigiste.wav, En-us-dirigiste.oga.

Cite this entry: “dirigiste.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dirigiste. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.