What's the difference between aristocracy and democracy?

Aristocracy


Definition:

  • (n.) Government by the best citizens.
  • (n.) A ruling body composed of the best citizens.
  • (n.) A form a government, in which the supreme power is vested in the principal persons of a state, or in a privileged order; an oligarchy.
  • (n.) The nobles or chief persons in a state; a privileged class or patrician order; (in a popular use) those who are regarded as superior to the rest of the community, as in rank, fortune, or intellect.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But now people are thinking about the public school elites, aristocracy, City of London investment bankers, corporate lobbyists, and the imperialist warmongers, apologists and conspirators in the media, not as instruments of good government and a healthy democracy, but as dangerous impediments to it.
  • (2) In contrast to other European countries, Britain's aristocracy also managed to avoid obliteration by adapting and assimilating.
  • (3) They include some of her greatest artists, scientists, industrialists and statesmen and stateswomen; most of her older aristocracy; and her present Queen.
  • (4) You couldn’t go home because your head was buzzing”: It was in the Flying Squad that Malton was first to come across those members of the underworld's aristocracy.
  • (5) Estate agents report that the top end of the market is booming, and there is no greater sign of the desirability of a stately home - authentically historic or imitation - than in Britain's new aristocracy: footballers.
  • (6) I sympathise a little with Hunt – he was born into military aristocracy, a cousin of the Queen, went to Charterhouse, then Oxford, then into PR: trying to get him to understand the life of an overworked student nurse is like trying to get an Amazonian tree frog to understand the plot of Blade Runner.
  • (7) It threatened to sweep away the privileges of an inward looking aristocracy convinced that their glory days would never end.
  • (8) I was surprised to find how widespread the belief in ghosts was among the aristocracy.
  • (9) And he despised them because he saw them as entrenching the prestige and status of the aristocracy.” Caligula wanted to rule as an autocrat and he was contemptuous of the pretence that the senate had any power at all.
  • (10) "All of this behaviour supporting the aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades.
  • (11) Eugenie Bouchard, the Canadian rising fast through the aristocracy of women’s tennis, swept aside the German Angelique Kerber on Wednesday to book her place in the Wimbledon semi-finals.
  • (12) To begin with, not all "sherpas" are Sherpas – porters from other parts of Nepal now do a lot of the heavy lifting, leaving Sherpas as a labour aristocracy of mountain guides.
  • (13) These great families formed what Annan called an "intellectual aristocracy", who bequeathed to their descendants not money or titles, but rather "some trait of personality, some tradition of behaviour, which did not perish with the passing of the years".
  • (14) There is a history of Britain that is about empire, aristocracy, monarchy, the established church, exploitative employers, and so on.
  • (15) We want to ask him about his three ex-wives, the future of the aristocracy, and whether he has days where he'd like to throw his titles in the dam and bog off to live with the Chacma baboons of Mozambique.
  • (16) Huxley was a child of England's intellectual aristocracy.
  • (17) Kate Middleton might just about be construed into an example of upward social mobility from the affluent middle classes into the aristocracy.
  • (18) In its turn, this raunchy and rebellious interpretation came under attack in the 1980s for disregarding the forces of the conservative establishment, underestimating the still formidable power of monarchy, aristocracy and Church of England.
  • (19) Such families worked their way into the aristocracy, courted royalty and found themselves and their descendants partly eroded by economic pressures and personal tragedies in the second half of the 20th century.
  • (20) He graduated in 1897 and was, in turn, a country general practitioner, the principal medical officer of an overcrowded plague-ship bringing home soldiers from the Boer War, senior surgeon of St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne then, in London, surgeon-in-chief of his own hospital converted to the 'Hospital for Wounded Officers' with promotion to the ranks of brigadier-general and rear-admiral, then knighted and, finally, a consultant surgeon with private hospitals in Park Lane and in Cannes, and with patients largely drawn from the aristocracy, the rich and the famous.

Democracy


Definition:

  • (n.) Government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is retained and directly exercised by the people.
  • (n.) Government by popular representation; a form of government in which the supreme power is retained by the people, but is indirectly exercised through a system of representation and delegated authority periodically renewed; a constitutional representative government; a republic.
  • (n.) Collectively, the people, regarded as the source of government.
  • (n.) The principles and policy of the Democratic party, so called.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) On his blog, Grillo called the referendum results a victory for democracy.
  • (2) We are deeply saddened," said Nyan Win, a spokesman of National League for Democracy.
  • (3) Despite Facebook's size and reach, and its much-vaunted role in the short-lived Arab spring , there are reasons for thinking that Twitter may be the more important service for the future of the public sphere – that is, the space in which democracies conduct public discussion.
  • (4) UPDATE II [Tues.] Two other items that may be of interest: first, Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger was the guest for the full hour yesterday on Democracy Now, discussing the paper's role in reporting the NSA stories, and the video and transcript of the interview are here ; second, marking our collaboration on a series of articles about spying on Indians, the Hindu has a long interview with me on a variety of related topics, here .
  • (5) Can somebody who is not a billionaire, who stands for working families, actually win an election into which billionaires are pouring millions of dollars?” Naming prominent and controversial rightwing donors, he said: “It is not just Hillary, it is the Koch brothers, it is Sheldon Adelson.” Stephanopoulos seized the moment, asking: “Are you lumping her in with them?” Choosing to refer to the 2010 supreme court decision that removed limits on corporate political donations, rather than address the question directly, Sanders replied: “What I am saying is that I get very frightened about the future of American democracy when this becomes a battle between billionaires.
  • (6) Historical reality suggests the concept of socially necessary risk determined through the dialectic process in democracy.
  • (7) Spain’s constitutional court responded by unanimously ruling that the legislation had ignored and infringed the rules of the 1978 constitution , adding that the “principle of democracy cannot be considered to be separate from the unconditional primacy of the constitution”.
  • (8) These are basic principles of democracy and Israeli law.
  • (9) The values of human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and the respect for human rights are absolutely fundamental to the European Union.
  • (10) And it means the Foreign Office dealing with those in the Middle East and North Africa who are on the side of democracy and human rights, not sitting down to tea with torturers.
  • (11) The referendum shows that democracy really sucks – that democracy does not deliver stability, prosperity [or] responsible government,” Tsang said.
  • (12) This thoughtful intervention brought new hope to us and others, for the rebuilding of public trust in surveillance conducted with respect for privacy, democracy and the law.
  • (13) "For tax evaders, she should turn to Pasok and New Democracy to explain to her why they haven't touched the big money and have been chasing the simple worker for two years."
  • (14) Secularism is the only way to stop collapse and chaos and to foster bonds of citizenship in our complex democracy.
  • (15) The charity Bite the Ballot , which persuaded hundreds of thousands to register before the last general election, is to set up “democracy cafes” in Starbucks branches, laying on experts to explain how to register and vote, and what the referendum is all about (Bite the Ballot does not take sides but merely encourages participation).
  • (16) The writer John Lanchester concedes that democracies will always need spies, but reading the Snowden documents persuaded him that piecing together habits of thought from internet searches takes things far beyond conventional spying: “Google doesn’t just know you’re gay before you tell your mum; it knows you’re gay before you do.
  • (17) In the wake of her win, Aung San Suu Kyi has written to Min Aung Hlaing, the president, Thein Sein, and the parliamentary Speaker, Shwe Mann, requesting a meeting to discuss the election and “national reconciliation”, according to the National League for Democracy Facebook page.
  • (18) Our later measures – parliament's power to declare peace and war, MPs to be subject to a right to recall, an end to the royal prerogative, an elected Lords – were about a 21st-century democracy, with citizenship to be founded on a new bill of rights and responsibilities and, in time, a written constitution.
  • (19) It won’t happen suddenly, but the most likely outcome for European social democracy is the one being secretly contemplated on the Labour backbenches: a fusion with liberalised conservatism.
  • (20) The genius of a democracy governed by the rule of law, our democracy, is that it both empowers the majority through the ballot box, and constrains the majority, its government, so that it is bound by law.” Turnbull added: “Why does Daesh [another term for Islamic State] hate us?