anarchic

American

[an-ahr-kik] / ænˈɑr kɪk /

Also anarchical

adjective

of, like, or tending to anarchy.
advocating anarchy.
not regulated by law; lawless.

Anarchic bands pillaged the countryside.

Other Word Forms

anarchically adverb
hyperanarchic adjective
nonanarchic adjective
nonanarchical adjective
nonanarchically adverb
proanarchic adjective
unanarchic adjective

Etymology

Origin of anarchic

First recorded in 1780–90; either from French anarchique or anarch(y) + -ic

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Shot on a handheld digital camera, the film applies an anarchic home-movie aesthetic to a superbly performed, discomfitingly comic drama of darkness within a family.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 20, 2025

Just look at the anarchic energy of The Spice Girls' Wannabe, or the seven-part pop Frankenstein that was Girls Aloud's Biology and ask yourself, "Could Westlife have pulled that off?"

From BBC • Nov. 7, 2025

Due to its liberating and anarchic nature, there is a consensus that Burning Man symbolizes the legacy of the socially libertarian spirit of the 1960s counterculture.

From Salon • Oct. 27, 2025

Berlin became a pumping techno and rave hub in the years following the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, as an anarchic counterculture moved into abandoned industrial sites to create music, dance and art spaces.

From Barron's • Oct. 16, 2025

Under that nation’s politics and parades and passions runs an old darkness, passive, anarchic, silent, the fecund darkness of the Handdara.

From "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023