Word.ws English Dictionary

enemy of the people

enemy of the people noun: a political or class opponent of the subgroup in power within a larger group.

Noun

enemy of the people (plural enemies of the people)

  1. (typically socialism or communism) A political or class opponent of the subgroup in power within a larger group.
    • The NKVD organs . . . could extend the category of ‘enemy of the people’ to everyone who dared to utter a word of criticism.1968, Robert Conquest, quoting Wladislaw Gomulka, “The Foreign Element”, in The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties, Macmillan Company, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 427

enemy of the people meaning in Arabic and Persian

enemy of the people in Arabic

a political or class opponent of the subgroup in power within a larger group
عَدُوُّ الشَّعْبِ ʕaduwwu aš-šaʕbi

enemy of the people in Persian

a political or class opponent of the subgroup in power within a larger group
دشمن خلق došman-e xalq

Forms of enemy of the people

pluralenemies of the people

Origin of enemy of the people

Calque of Latin hostis publicus (compare public enemy).

Questions about enemy of the people

What does enemy of the people mean?
Enemy of the people means a political or class opponent of the subgroup in power within a larger group.
What is enemy of the people in Arabic?
Enemy of the people in Arabic is عَدُوُّ الشَّعْبِ (ʕaduwwu aš-šaʕbi). See Enemy of the people meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is enemy of the people?
Enemy of the people is a noun.
What is the plural of enemy of the people?
The plural of enemy of the people is enemies of the people.

Words near enemy of the people in the dictionary

  1. enemy combatants
  2. enemy image
  3. enemy images
  4. enemy line
  5. enemy lines
  6. enemy of the people
  7. enemy of the state
  8. enemy-like
  9. enemye
  10. enemyes
  11. enemyhood

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: enemy of the people (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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