Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use authoritarian in a sentence

34 example sentences · adjective, noun

Authoritarian means of, or relating to, or exhibiting strict obedience to an authority; favoring authoritarianism over civic and individual liberties. Example: “The authoritarian government was demanding stricter laws for low-wage peasants.”

Examples of authoritarian by meaning

adjectiveOf, or relating to, or exhibiting strict obedience to an authority; favoring authoritarianism over civic and individual...

  • the authoritarian personality

adjectiveDemanding obedience to authority; marked by authoritarianism; dictatorial, tyrannical.

  • The authoritarian government was demanding stricter laws for low-wage peasants.
  • It may be that precisely due to its weak nature, an authoritarian dictatorship needs rampant violence and lies to maintain its rule.2020 March 14, Shixin, “What Did the Sudden Fall of the Berlin Wall Tell Us?”, in Minghui, archived from the original on 01 Oct 2025
  • Democratic countries should clearly recognize and unify against the challenge of authoritarian intervention.2022, “September 25, 2022”, in Mainland Affairs Council, archived from the original on 04 Mar 2023, Chronology

nounOne who commands absolute obedience to his or her authority.

  • The dictator was an authoritarian.
  • A true authoritarian, confronted by limits on his power, might have ripped through them in service of establishing his authority.2020 April 14, Quinta Jurecic, Benjamin Wittes, “Being an Actual Authoritarian Is Too Much Work for Trump”, in The Atlantic, archived from...

More sentences with authoritarian

  • The authoritarian regime oversaw the total emasculation of the country's judiciary.From the entry emasculation
  • Under an authoritarian regime, people have an obligation to disobey.From the entry disobey
  • The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is skeptical: The Republican Party has gone authoritarian.2021 August 5, David Brooks, “The Biden Approach Is Working”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry big money
  • His version of masculinity is a parody of an über male (complete with the goose-steppy authoritarian umlaut).2019 January 3, Gene Weingarten, “President Trump: The new Mae West? Let us explain.”, in The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.: The…. From the entry über
  • Yesterday's Jennermania confirms how weirdly authoritarian, even idolatrous, trans politics has become.2015, Brendan O'Neill, ‘Call me Caitlyn, or else’: the rise of authoritarian transgender politics (in The Spectator, June). From the entry Jennermania
  • Every authoritarian movement has felt the same way.2019 June 14, Adam Serwer, “The Illiberal Right Throws a Tantrum”, in The Atlantic. From the entry Orbánist
  • Instead, China's authoritarian leader has waged war on dissent with unexpected ferocity, throwing some opponents in jail and forcing others overseas.2017 October 14, Tom Phillips, “Chairman Xi crushes dissent but poor believe he's making China great”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The…. From the entry calamitous
  • In South Korea, the Mingjung Theology inspired Christians and Catholics to question the legitimacy of the authoritarian regime.2012, Cheng-tian Kuo, “Institutional Choices of Church-State Relations in Chinese Societies”, in Baogang Guo, Chung-chian Teng, editors…. From the entry christian
  • Even some fellow Conservatives maintain that Sir William has shown a dangerously authoritarian streak since enlisting as a general in Mrs.1988 June 10, Howell Raines, “Journal: In Tory Country, Someone to Watch Over TV”, in New York Times, retrieved 16 Jan 2012. From the entry bring to heel
  • The decay of social norms and status quo systems triggering an authoritarian tightening of the screws is a well-worn pattern throughout human history.2023 August 28, Charles Hugh Smith, Neither Comply Nor Resist. From the entry well-worn
  • But while the Weinstein effect has swept across the Americas, Europe and other parts of Asia, there has been near silence in China’s authoritarian mainland.2018 January 9, Tom Phillips, “China's women break silence on harassment as #MeToo becomes #WoYeShi”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry Weinstein effect
  • These “privatized” rents are not directly controlled by the authoritarian state and they cannot be, in classic rentier-state logic, shorthandedly distributed according to political considerations.2013, Holger Albrecht, Raging Against the Machine: Political Opposition Under Authoritarianism in Egypt, →ISBN, page 26. From the entry shorthandedly
  • The working person discovered that hir own body belonged, not to the state or to the moralist or to the authoritarian doctor, but to hirself.2001 June 9, Timothy Leary, chapter 8, in Your Brain is God, Oakland: Ronin Publishing, →ISBN, →LCCN, LCC BP570.L43 2001. From the entry hirself
  • He was authoritarian but he was also a Mama’s boy, and his mouth, as I said, was a little soft and a lot contemptuous.1994, Jack Erdmann with Larry Kearney, chapter 2, in Whiskey’s Children: An Inspiring True Story of Struggle and Redemption, New York…. From the entry mama's boy
  • Translated into political terms, this reflectionism becomes the subservience to a higher object that characterizes the relation that Chinese intellectuals have to the authoritarian state.1993, Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora, page 80. From the entry reflectionism
  • China is “proving to be a feckless friend for its authoritarian allies,” Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China under President Joe Biden, wrote on X.2026 March 6, Charlie Campbell, quoting Nicholas Burns, “The Iran War Has Distracted and Depleted the U.S. Military. But It May Also Have…. From the entry feckless
  • The animals serve as good-will ambassadors for China while, experts said, softening the country’s authoritarian image and drawing attention away from its record of human rights abuses.2022 February 13, Alyssa Lukpat, “50 Years Later, Some Question Value of U.S.-China ‘Panda Diplomacy’”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry panda diplomacy
  • During the latter part of Taiwan's authoritarian period, social protest movements arose that complemented the periodic efforts of the political opposition- the dangwai-to open the political system.2021, Richard C. Bush, Difficult Choices: Taiwan's Quest for Security and the Good Life, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press…. From the entry movement
  • Sensitive to voter interests, western democracies may yet touch the brakes when it comes to mass deployment of AI technology, while authoritarian regimes hit the accelerator hard.2019 July 11, John Thornhill, “Does tech threaten to rerun the worst of the Industrial Revolution?”, in Financial Times. From the entry hit the accelerator
  • Not at all: those who want to organize their leader-becomings demand that the anarchist language disappears and that anarchists finally learn to express themselves in authoritarian politickese.2016, chapter IX, in To the Customers: Insurrection and Doublethink, Aragorn Moser, page 110. From the entry politickese
  • In this traditional context, it's easy to assume that anything short of an ironhanded, authoritarian attitude toward discipline is flat-out permissive, although this common belief is not remotely true.2014, Jane Bluestein, Managing 21st Century Classrooms: How do I avoid ineffective classroom management practices?, →ISBN, page 3. From the entry ironhanded
  • As previously stated, redress had previously been focused on transitional justice, providing criminal, legislative, and reparatory justice following a shift from an authoritarian regime to a democratic regime.2013, Stephanie Wolfe, “Redress and Reparation Movements (RRMs) Following the United States Internments”, in The Politics of Reparations…. From the entry redress
  • Chinese authorities have no patience for these Mao-lovers, who seem to have forgotten the former communist leader’s authoritarian streak and retained only the idyllic vision of a fairer society.2011 September 23, Ségolène Malterre, “Modern-day Maoists worry Chinese authorities”, in France 24, archived from the original on 28 Dec…. From the entry Taiyuan
  • Why then, one may ask, does stealthy electrotorture appear first in the colonies and foreign wars of democracies and not in the colonies and foreign wars of authoritarian states?2009, Darius Rejali, Torture and Democracy, page 194. From the entry electrotorture
  • A clear attempt by the outgoing authoritarian regime to establish the institutional and organizational basis for exercising military tutelarity over the democratic process occurred in the Chilean transition.1990 December, Julio Samuel Valenzuela, Democratic Consolidation in Post-transitional Settings: Notion, Process, and Facilitating…. From the entry tutelarity
  • On the other hand, one could retort that it is rather the liquidational anonymity, the faceless disdain, represented in the first quotation that reflects the authoritarian system.1961, Franklin M[arvin] Fisher, Jerome Rothenberg, “How Income Ought to Be Distributed: Paradox Lost”, in The Journal of Political…. From the entry liquidational
  • The abbé de Saint-Pierre, for example, saw in the principle of Polysynody a framework for refashioning the polity so as to make it markedly less authoritarian than under Louis XIV.2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 40. From the entry polysynody
  • Those who start out by vilifying the so-called integralists or traditionalists or arch-conservatives seem always to end by attacking the hierarchical structure of the Church itself and its authoritarian pope.1988 June 24, John C. Prendiville, “The Papal Chase”, in Chicago Reader. From the entry integralist

Meaning of authoritarian

  1. adjective Of, or relating to, or exhibiting strict obedience to an authority; favoring authoritarianism over civic and individual liberties.
  2. adjective Demanding obedience to authority; marked by authoritarianism; dictatorial, tyrannical.
  3. adjective Tending to impose one's demands upon others as if one were an authority.

Full definition of authoritarian

Questions about authoritarian in a sentence

How do you use authoritarian in a sentence?
Authoritarian is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “The authoritarian government was demanding stricter laws for low-wage peasants.”
What is a short sentence with authoritarian?
“the authoritarian personality”
What does authoritarian mean?
Authoritarian means of, or relating to, or exhibiting strict obedience to an authority; favoring authoritarianism over civic and individual liberties.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: authoritarian (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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