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9 Words About Beginnings

police state

noun
1.
a nation in which the police, especially a secret police, summarily suppresses any social, economic, or political act that conflicts with governmental policy.
Origin
1860-1865
1860-65
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2015.
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Examples from the web for police state
  • Pollution and overpopulation are again the culprits that have turned the world into a police state.
  • The movie plainly suggests that controlling language is part of the authoritarian hangover of a former police state.
  • We are being conditioned to accept the police state.
  • It is clear that he never let himself forget the presence of the police state.
  • Not politically: it was a police state and a harsh one.
  • The security of a police state is not true security.
  • We get a lamentable amount of authoritarian police state infrastructure and activity.
  • Behind the rhetoric of national liberation lurked an increasingly nasty police state.
  • The security services do have more influence than they used to, but nowhere near enough to make the country a police state.
  • It was the fact that it was a police state where people were denied the basic liberties.
British Dictionary definitions for police state

police state

noun
1.
a state or country in which a repressive government maintains control through the police
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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police state in Culture

police state definition


A nation whose rulers maintain order and obedience by the threat of police or military force; one with a brutal, arbitrary government.

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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10
13
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