Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Tyranny
/ˈtɪrəni/noun
Cruel and unchecked rule by a single person or a small group.
The Greek roots
τύραννος
týrannos
absolute ruler
Literally: “rule by one who seized power”
Follow a root:τύραννος2 words
The story of the word
τύραννος began as a job description, not an insult: anyone who took power outside the hereditary line was one, and several were popular. The word is probably not Greek at all but a loan from Lydian or a neighbouring Anatolian language. Athenian memory of the Peisistratids turned it hostile, and it was the hostile sense that Latin and then English inherited in the fourteenth century.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
tyranttyrannicaltyrannosaurus
In a sentence
The pamphlet called it tyranny, which was brave in 1770 and expensive in 1771.