totalitarian
Americanadjective
-
of or relating to a centralized government that does not tolerate parties of differing opinion and that exercises dictatorial control over many aspects of life.
-
exercising control over the freedom, will, or thought of others; authoritarian; autocratic.
noun
adjective
noun
Other Word Forms
- antitotalitarian adjective
- nontotalitarian adjective
- totalitarianism noun
Etymology
Origin of totalitarian
First recorded in 1925–30; totalit(y) + -arian
Explanation
You can decipher the meaning of totalitarian by the first part: "total." It refers to a government with total power, one that exercises complete, even oppressive control over the people and their activities. (You can also figure it’s not nice.) The word totalitarian first came about in 1926 as totalitario, an adjective to describe the Italian fascism of that time. The English form was adapted from the Italian to describe an absolutely powerful regime. Socialist leader Norman Thomas once said: "To us Americans much has been given; of us much is required. With all our faults and mistakes, it is our strength in support of the freedom our forefathers loved which has saved mankind from subjection to totalitarian power."
Vocabulary lists containing totalitarian
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I've Been to the Mountaintop" (1968)
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Power Suffix: -arian
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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.
One of the dark ideas of the novel is that the aristocracy’s moral and spiritual bankruptcy left them helpless in the face of Europe’s rising totalitarian ideologies.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 8, 2026
It was adopted two years after former Czechoslovakia had shed the totalitarian communist rule of four decades, and two years before it split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
From Barron's • Feb. 20, 2026
Breaking ranks in a constitutional democracy may not incur the same risks as in a totalitarian regime, but revising the dictionary of received ideas isn’t for cowards in any society.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 18, 2025
“The Handmaid’s Tale,” her prescient novel of totalitarian dictatorship, began with the group hanging scene, which was shifted to the back of the book.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 3, 2025
But what they didn’t say was that prison was also a microcosm of a totalitarian society, a nearly pure example of the police state.
From "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing" by Ted Conover
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
