tin god
tin god noun: a false god, particularly a petty tyrant, a person who abuses or exceeds their authority over others in petty ways.
Noun
tin god (plural tin gods)
- A false god, particularly a petty tyrant, a person who abuses or exceeds their authority over others in petty ways.
- Wherefore the Little Tin Gods harried their little tin souls, / Seeing he came not from Chatham, jingled no spurs at his heels; […]1886, Rudyard Kipling, “[Departmental Ditties] Public Waste”, in Departmental Ditties […], New York, N.Y.: M. F. Mansfield & A. Wessels, published 1899, →OCLC
- In Prussia alone there are 492 Landräte—a sort of district commissioner—all Government officials or directly in touch with the central government, and all little tin gods in their own district.1909, Frederic William Wile et al., Our German Cousins, page 89
Forms of tin god
| plural | tin gods |
|---|
Origin of tin god
From tin's figurative sense as "worthless" or "counterfeit" in relation to silver and god's use for idols.
Questions about tin god
- What does tin god mean?
- Tin god means a false god, particularly a petty tyrant, a person who abuses or exceeds their authority over others in petty ways.
- What part of speech is tin god?
- Tin god is a noun.
- What is the plural of tin god?
- The plural of tin god is tin gods.
Words near tin god in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tin god (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-tin god.ogg.
Cite this entry: “tin god.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tin_god. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.