Word.ws English Dictionary

hard power

hard power noun: the use of military and economic means to influence the behavior or interests of other political bodies.

Noun

hard power (countable and uncountable, plural hard powers)

  1. The use of military and economic means to influence the behavior or interests of other political bodies.
    • But even as America’s allies see our interests converging and the most successful military alliance in the history of the world restores its commitments to hard power, the previous Administration’s shameful hesitation and half-measures threaten to give way to something even more disgraceful: the...2025 February 24, Mitch McConnell, “McConnell on Three-Year Anniversary of Russia’s Escalation in Ukraine”, in Mitch McConnell U.S. Senator for Kentucky, archived from the original on 26 Feb 2025...
  2. A state having this kind of power.

Forms of hard power

pluralhard powers

Questions about hard power

What does hard power mean?
Hard power means the use of military and economic means to influence the behavior or interests of other political bodies.
What part of speech is hard power?
Hard power is a noun.
What is the plural of hard power?
The plural of hard power is hard powers.

Words near hard power in the dictionary

  1. hard pill to swallow
  2. hard pills
  3. hard pills to swallow
  4. hard pine
  5. hard pines
  6. hard power
  7. hard powers
  8. hard pull
  9. hard pulls
  10. hard pushed
  11. hard put

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hard power (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:

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