police state
a nation in which the police, especially a secret police, summarily suppresses any social, economic, or political act that conflicts with governmental policy.
Origin of police state
1Words Nearby police state
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use police state in a sentence
You could never fund it and you’d be a police state if you did.
In Iraq we deposed a dictator who led a totalitarian police state ruling by terror who headed a minority Sunni Muslim government in a majority Shiite country.
Early into the pandemic, the city pushed back against a flurry of articles suggesting that the broadcasting of public announcements to homeless encampments via drones was verging on a police state.
Chula Vista PD’s Drone Program Opened a Revolving Door for Officers | Sofía Mejías Pascoe | April 5, 2021 | Voice of San DiegoHe rules with an iron fist and has turned the country into a police state.
John Magufuli, Tanzanian president elected as an agent of reform, dies at 61 | Matt Schudel | March 17, 2021 | Washington PostThe classic novel about the perils of a totalitarian police state.
A secular police state well practiced in suppressing internal challenges.
The police state system that propped up dictators from Algiers to Islamabad for decades was unsustainable.
Why’s Al Qaeda So Strong? Washington Has (Literally) No idea | Bruce Riedel | November 9, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTA former Ebola patient calls the forcible isolation of returning health-care workers from West Africa a ‘police state approach.’
And I, for one, do not want to live in a country that is a "police state" for some, and not for others.
If there was violence, and then violence back, you have to blame the police state.
In Egypt’s Countryside, Vendettas Between Police and Islamists Simmer | Mike Giglio, Christopher Dickey | October 28, 2013 | THE DAILY BEASTHaving experienced what the police state meant, he would have been untrue to himself if he had yielded to it.
Security | Poul William AndersonI don't think you can get absolute security without almost establishing a police state, and we don't want that.
Warren Commission (5 of 26): Hearings Vol. V (of 15) | The President's Commission on the Assassination of President KennedyYou expect a responsible government to be in control after the removal of the police state.
Revolution | Dallas McCord ReynoldsDuring the time of readjustment after Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, Bulgaria's police state period gradually came to a close.
Area Handbook for Bulgaria | Eugene K. Keefe, Violeta D. Baluyut, William Giloane, Anne K. Long, James M. Moore, and Neda A. WalpoleThis was a book about—it is a projection into the future, supposed to take place in 1984 in England under a complete police state.
Warren Commission (11 of 26): Hearings Vol. XI (of 15) | The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy
British Dictionary definitions for police state
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
Cultural definitions for police state
A nation whose rulers maintain order and obedience by the threat of police or military force; one with a brutal, arbitrary government.
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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