Word.ws English Dictionary

tyranny of the majority

tyranny of the majority noun: a situation in which a government or other authority democratically supported by a majority of its subjects makes policies or takes actions benefiting that majority, without regard for the rights or welfare of the rest of its subjects.

Noun

tyranny of the majority (countable and uncountable, plural tyrannies of the majority or tyrannies of majorities)

  1. A situation in which a government or other authority democratically supported by a majority of its subjects makes policies or takes actions benefiting that majority, without regard for the rights or welfare of the rest of its subjects.
    • I suppose, however, that the secret voting has afforded, and will afford, an important security against the tyranny of the majority, which I consider as the greatest evil and the most formidable danger that can attend a purely democratical government.1837, Testimony of Alexis de Tocqueville in "An abridgement of the evidence given before the select committee, appointed in 1835, to consider the most effectual means of preventing bribery...
    • A popular will not so limited becomes the tyranny of the majority which destroys the freedom of political competition.1957, Hans J. Morgenthau, “The Dilemmas of Freedom”, in The American Political Science Review, volume 51, number 3, page 718

tyranny of the majority meaning in Malay and Indonesian

tyranny of the majority in Malay

Translations
tirani majoriti

tyranny of the majority in Indonesian

Translations
tirani mayoritas

Synonyms of tyranny of the majority

Forms of tyranny of the majority

pluraltyrannies of the majority
pluraltyrannies of majorities

Questions about tyranny of the majority

What does tyranny of the majority mean?
Tyranny of the majority means a situation in which a government or other authority democratically supported by a majority of its subjects makes policies or takes actions benefiting that majority, without regard for the rights or welfare of the rest of its subjects.
What is tyranny of the majority in Malay?
Tyranny of the majority in Malay is tirani majoriti. See Tyranny of the majority meaning in Malay.
What part of speech is tyranny of the majority?
Tyranny of the majority is a noun.
What is the plural of tyranny of the majority?
The plural of tyranny of the majority is tyrannies of the majority.

Words near tyranny of the majority in the dictionary

  1. tyrannously
  2. tyrannousness
  3. tyrannulet
  4. tyrannulets
  5. tyranny
  6. tyranny of the majority
  7. tyranny of the masses
  8. tyrans
  9. tyrant
  10. tyrant flycatcher
  11. tyrant flycatchers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tyranny of the majority (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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