adjective
definition
Of, or relating to tyranny or a tyrant.
definition
Despotic, oppressive or authoritarian.
Examples of tyrannical in a Sentence
He was a tyrannical ruler, and died suddenly in 1522.
From this time he became tyrannical.
In violation of the Law he married a brother's widow, who had already borne children, and in general he showed himself so fierce and tyrannical that the Jews joined with the Samaritans to accuse him before the emperor.
So tyrannical, however, was his rule that in 1316 he was expelled by the popular fury.
In 53 he entered upon the governorship of Cilicia, in which capacity he seems to have been rapacious and tyrannical.
The court of Vienna had treated the Silesian Protestants with tyrannical severity, in direct contravention of the treaty of Osnabruck, of which Sweden was one of the guarantors; and Charles demanded summary and complete restitution so dictatorially that the emperor prepared for war.
The father appears to have been somewhat peremptory in temper, but neither inhospitable nor tyrannical.
His tyrannical and barbarous conduct had made him obnoxious at home as well as abroad, and indeed many of his actions recall the worst passages of the history of the later Roman emperors.
Though a libertine and a free-thinker, he had championed the most bigoted and tyrannical high-church measures.
He held that the people, as distinguished from the nobles and the clergy, were the pith and fibre of nations; yet this same people had to become wax in the hands of the politician - their commerce and their comforts, the arts which give a dignity to life and the pleasures which make life liveable, neglected - their very liberty subordinated to the one tyrannical conception.
The compatibility of Christian and later Neo-Platonic ideas is evidenced by the writings of Synesius, bishop of Ptolemais, and though Neo-Platonism eventually succumbed to Christianity, it had the effect, through the writings of Clement and Origen, of modifying the tyrannical fanaticism and ultradogmatism of the early Christian writers.
Historical and religious sentiment combined with his destestation of all that was tyrannical to inspire him with hatred of the Turk and sympathy with the smaller and subject nationalities of eastern Europe.
In 1536, after a period of war and anarchy caused by the tyrannical rule of Menezes, Antonio Galvao, the historian, was appointed governor of the Moluccas.
His energy too not infrequently degenerated into violence, and when crossed he was apt to be tyrannical.
In this he drew a masterly picture, not only of the life and immorality of the friars but also of the insolent Filipino chiefs or caciques, subservient to the powers above, tyrannical to those below, superstitious, unprogressive and grasping.
The city seems to have been more than once under tyrannical rule in the early Ionian period; and it fell thereafter first to Croesus of Lydia, and then to Cyrus, the Persian, and when the Ionian revolt against Persia broke out in the year 500 B.C. under the lead of Miletus, the city remained submissive to Persian rule.
In Scotland James set up a tyrannical administration of the worst type.
It was not to the hostility of the natives, nor to the hard struggle with nature necessary to make agriculture profitable on Karroo or veld, that the slow progress made by the colonists was due, so much as to the narrow and tyrannical policy adopted by the East India Company, which closed the colony against free immigration, kept the whole of the trade in its own hands, combined the administrative, legislative and judicial powers in one body, prescribed to the farmers the nature of the crops they were to grow, demanded from them a large part of their produce, and harassed them with other exactions tending to discourage industry and enterprise.
In 1 545 his father conferred on him the duchy of Parma and Piacenza, which likewise belonged to the Holy See, and his rule proved cruel and tyrannical.
Great cruelty and perfidy were displayed in the suppression of the native rebellion, and some accounts represent him as personally tyrannical.
Few soldiers were obtained by the conscription, for the government was as weak as it was tyrannical.
The demands of the British government after 1760 were not especially unreasonable or tyrannical, but they were made upon a people who were too long accustomed to having their own way.
For some time they held the extreme south-east point of the island at Fort Dauphin; but several of their commandants were so incapable and tyrannical that they were frequently involved in war with the people, and more than once their stations were destroyed and the French were massacred.
Frederickdistrustful, and in the pay of Louis XI.evaded a meeting arranged at Trier, and Burgundian influence in Alsace was suddenly brought to a violent end by the putting to death of its tyrannical agent, Peter von the Bold.
Strangely enough, in this exile - rendered still more irksome by his father's mania for solitude and by his tyrannical temper - the genius of Octave Feuillet developed.
It sounds like some English gothic—a naive waif married off to tyrannical older man who holds her hostage in a golden cage and beats her into submission!
According to the legend, King John and the Sheriff of Nottingham were tyrannical rulers, ruthlessly exploitingthe poor people of Nottingham.
These are centers where spiritual life has not yet been altogether extinguished by the tyrannical mediocrity of Western materialism.
He became increasingly tyrannical and angered the English people with such measures as forced loans and loyalty oaths.
According to the legend, King John and the Sheriff of Nottingham were tyrannical rulers, ruthlessly exploiting the poor people of Nottingham.
The people of Zimbabwe, hapless victims of an increasingly tyrannical regime, deserve no less from us.
Feeling We are often tyrannical about the way we feel.
Does it imply, if not tyrannical lordship, at the very least some sort of pivotal leadership role in relation to the earth?
But at any rate it's a rather tyrannical power.
Why blame the men for measures, even tyrannical, in self-defence?
Her affection tired very soon, however, and when she grew peevish, Hindley became tyrannical.
They are skilful agriculturists and artisans, especially in textile fabrics and the manufacture of arms. Though native rule is tyrannical and arbitrary, especially in the principalities of Badung and Tabanan, trade and industry could not flourish if insecurity of persons and property existed to any great extent.
Jonathan Worth (1802-1869), elected governor under the presidential plan in 1865, was an honest and capable official, but the government established in accordance with the views of Congress in 1868 was corrupt, inefficient and tyrannical.
Much controversy had raged over the conflicting principles of the equal representation of states and of representation on the basis of numbers, the larger states advocating the latter, the smaller states the former principle; and those who made themselves champions of the rights of the states professed to dread the tyrannical power which an assembly representing population might exert.
But at any rate it 's a rather tyrannical power.
These twisted beings are the previous tyrannical rulers of the solar system who enforced their iron-fisted law with genetic mutant warriors !
The fall of a tyrannical regime is a positive thing.
Carlos ' tyrannical father, King Philip II of Spain, decides to marry Elizabeth himself.
Instead, they have traditionally focused on Cromwell 's role as a defender of nascent English ' parliamentary traditions ' against a tyrannical king.
He urged them to take up arms to oppose their tyrannical rule.
His lifelong quest is to free his "people" from the tyrannical clutches of the Outworld (his home world is Zaterra, annexed by Shao Kahn), and his absolute dedication to this goal leads to fits of insanity at times.
His name and exploits still live in the popular legends, and the insurrection is often referred to in revolutionary pamphlets as a laudable popular protest against tyrannical autocracy.
Governor William Woods Holden (1818-1892; governor 1868-1870) was so weak and tyrannical that he was impeached by the legislature in December 1870.
The local despots of Romagna were dispossessed and an administration was set up, which, if tyrannical and cruel, was at least orderly and strong, and aroused the admiration of Machiavelli.
Many families of good character now settled at the Bahamas, and some progress was made in developing the resources of the colony, although this was interrupted by the tyrannical conduct of some of the governors who succeeded Captain Woodes Rogers.