Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use tyrant in a sentence

28 example sentences · noun, adjective, verb

Tyrant means a usurper; one who gains power and rules extralegally, distinguished from kings elevated by election or succession. Example: “Jim was a tyrant who threw his weight around when it came to punishing his students.”

More sentences with tyrant

  • Jim was a tyrant who threw his weight around when it came to punishing his students.From the entry throw one's weight around
  • The country was at that time ruled by a death-dealing tyrant.From the entry death-dealing
  • The tyrant would have their heads for their temerity.From the entry have someone's head
  • I'll never bow to that tyrant.From the entry bow
  • Such a glazer for the most evil tyrants in the world.2024 January 21, u/JamIsJam88, “Trump Suggests He'll Leave Taiwan to China”, in Reddit, r/WhitePeopleTwitter, archived from the original…. From the entry glazer
  • Perhaps he had learned something from Michael Collins—never bend the knee to the tyrant.2015, Dermot McEvoy, “How Michael Collins Helped Save Winston Churchill’s Career”, in Irish Miscellany: Everything You Always Wanted to…. From the entry wilderness
  • Ferrar did not rule as a tyrant, nor was he the pseudomessiah of a cult.2013, Frank N. Magill, editor, The 17th and 18th Centuries: Dictionary of World Biography, page 463. From the entry pseudomessiah
  • Richard's tomblessness in Corbett's account serves as a sharp lesson to would-be tyrants.2013, Philip Schwyzer, Shakespeare and the Remains of Richard III, page 34. From the entry tomblessness
  • Neither of the Quintuses moved, too enthralled to care what Gnaeus Pompey did to the family tyrant.2002, Colleen McCullough, “The March of Cato’s Ten Thousand […]”, in The October Horse (Masters of Rome; 6), London: Century, →ISBN…. From the entry quintus
  • A malignant in a position of real power immediately becomes a tyrant.1999, National Institute of Business Management, Difficult People at Work, →ISBN, page 8. From the entry malignant
  • In other words, liberalism defines government as tyrant father but demands it behave as nurturant mother.1990, Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae. From the entry nurturant
  • "I fear thee not, thou ticking tyrant." "You slay me," grinned Cedric.1971, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 29. From the entry slay
  • “Your brother is a cold-hearted tyrant, and his wife is a snob.1911, C. N. Williamson, The Golden Silence, page 19. From the entry duchesshood
  • Let no man say that the Devil is not a cruel tyrant.1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide. From the entry yea
  • In our third example, the tyrant Nabis usurped power from the traditional, dual basileis of Sparta, then had them executed.2017, Michael Martin, City of the Sun: Development and Popular Resistance in the Pre-Modern West, New York, N.Y.: Algora Publishing…. From the entry basileus
  • Tyrant Chieh or Robber Chih: according to tradition, Chieh was an evil ruler who brought down the great Hsia Dynasty.2015, Hsün Tzu, “Man's Nature Is Evil”, in Michael Austin, editor, Reading the World: Ideas that matter, 3rd edition, W. W. Norton &…. From the entry Hsia
  • Tyrants want praise so much they demand it by the stadiumful, but forced praise is near screams and weeping.2007, Willis Goth Regier, In Praise of Flattery, U of Nebraska Press, →ISBN, page 3. From the entry stadiumful
  • A visibly frail Roosevelt played his usual role of mediator between the pugnacious Churchill and the scowling tyrant Stalin.2000, Edward R. Kantowicz, Coming Apart, Coming Together, →ISBN, page 3. From the entry ring down the curtain
  • The tyrant machine is the female body, grinding and milling the pulp of matter, the gluten of human flesh.1990, Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae. From the entry gluten
  • This philosopher king contrasts sharply with the cruel tyrant, who plays a memorable role in other parts of the Histories.1987, Stewart Flory, The Archaic Smile of Herodotus. From the entry philosopher king
  • "I fear thee not, thou ticking tyrant."1971, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 29. From the entry contemptuously
  • Most tyrants on seizing power start off by murdering the aristocracy; so conservatives are as tyrannophobe as democrats, and Dion was all that they admired.2015, Mary Renault, The Mask of Apollo: A Virago Modern Classic, →ISBN. From the entry tyrannophobe
  • Unimaginable amounts of suffering have been caused by tyrants who callously presided over the immiseration of their peoples or launched destructive wars of conquest.2011, Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, published 2012, →ISBN…. From the entry immiseration
  • Publication of secret documents blaming the world's troubles on an interplanetary tyrant named Xemu has held the Church of Scientology up to public ridicule.1985 November 17, Miami Herald staff, “Scientology battered but not bowed in row over secret papers”, in Miami Herald, page 12A. From the entry Xemu
  • Is he to be taken as glorifying the cruel tyrant, the “beast of prey”, or did he have some less repulsive ideal?1973, Philippa Foot, “"Nietzsche: The Revaluation of Values"”, in Robert C. Solomon, Garden City, New York, editors, Nietzsche: A…. From the entry beast of prey
  • Sometimes I wonder if she has a guilty memory which haunts her, and sometimes I suspect Barrymore of being a domestic tyrant.1901 August – 1902 April, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “First Report of Dr. Watson”, in The Hound of the Baskervilles: Another Adventure of…. From the entry puritanical
  • It is according to the same principles that tyrants declare an irreconcilable hatred for Truth and endeavour to crush those who are stronghearted enough to announce it.1997, Jean Paul de Lagrave, Voltaire's Man in America, →ISBN, page 330. From the entry stronghearted
  • The republiquette of which that professional trouble-maker was de facto tyrant, would be lost as a needle in a haystack in the smallest of the Argentine provinces.1927, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, The Pope of the Sea: An Historical Medley, page 220. From the entry republiquette

Meaning of tyrant

  1. noun A usurper; one who gains power and rules extralegally, distinguished from kings elevated by election or succession.
  2. noun Any monarch or governor.
  3. noun A despot; a ruler who governs unjustly, cruelly, or harshly.

Full definition of tyrant

Questions about tyrant in a sentence

How do you use tyrant in a sentence?
Tyrant is used as a noun, adjective and verb. For example: “Jim was a tyrant who threw his weight around when it came to punishing his students.”
What is a short sentence with tyrant?
“I'll never bow to that tyrant.”
What does tyrant mean?
Tyrant means a usurper; one who gains power and rules extralegally, distinguished from kings elevated by election or succession.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tyrant (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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Cite this page: “How to use tyrant in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/tyrant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.