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.

police state

noun

1. a state or country in which a repressive government maintains control through the police

police state

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

Word History and Origins

Origin of police state¹

First recorded in 1860–65

Example Sentences

You could never fund it and you’d be a police state if you did.

From Freakonomics

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.

From Time

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.

From Voice of San Diego

He rules with an iron fist and has turned the country into a police state.

From Washington Post

The classic novel about the perils of a totalitarian police state.

From Washington Post

A secular police state well practiced in suppressing internal challenges.

From The Daily Beast

The police state system that propped up dictators from Algiers to Islamabad for decades was unsustainable.

From The Daily Beast

A former Ebola patient calls the forcible isolation of returning health-care workers from West Africa a ‘police state approach.’

From The Daily Beast

And I, for one, do not want to live in a country that is a "police state" for some, and not for others.

From The Daily Beast

If there was violence, and then violence back, you have to blame the police state.

From The Daily Beast

Having experienced what the police state meant, he would have been untrue to himself if he had yielded to it.

From Project Gutenberg

I don't think you can get absolute security without almost establishing a police state, and we don't want that.

From Project Gutenberg

You expect a responsible government to be in control after the removal of the police state.

From Project Gutenberg

During the time of readjustment after Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, Bulgaria's police state period gradually came to a close.

From Project Gutenberg

This was a book about—it is a projection into the future, supposed to take place in 1984 in England under a complete police state.

From Project Gutenberg