What's the difference between aristocracy and oligarchy?

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.

Oligarchy


Definition:

  • (n.) A form of government in which the supreme power is placed in the hands of a few persons; also, those who form the ruling few.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Once neither painfully elitist nor patronisingly populist, Edinburgh in August now threatens to become an oligarchy, a Chipping Norton of the arts, its sluices greased by Foster's lager, rather than by country suppers and police horses.
  • (2) Coleridge, denouncing “a contemptible democratical oligarchy of glib economists”, asked: “Is the increasing number of wealthy individuals that which ought to be understood by the wealth of the nation?” Dickens did much with Carlyle’s despairing insight into cash payment as the “sole nexus” between human beings.
  • (3) Nor is the Vermont senator only attracting the usual leftwing suspects, such as those attendees who wore “Oligarchy Response Team” T-shirts.
  • (4) He promised to raise the minimum wage, rehire fired workers and to fight a Greek oligarchy well-known for its corruption and tax evasion.
  • (5) "Those who are responsible should pay for the crisis: the bankers, industrialists, ship-owners, big ­merchants, the oligarchy of this country."
  • (6) Hence the real question that Scots have to decide: will independence shift the balance of power away from oligarchy and towards democracy?
  • (7) If there is a “generational struggle to defend the principles of the free market”, it’s a struggle against the corporations, which have replaced the market with a state-endorsed oligarchy .
  • (8) Voting for the oligarchy is not how you get rid of the oligarchy,” said Carlos Martinez, 40, an activist from Texas who creates social media content .
  • (9) And that way is that today in America, we are living in a country that is moving quite rapidly toward an economic oligarchy and a political oligarchy.
  • (10) Thus politics in Russia , the one common denominator in the Litvinenko enigma, may have nothing to do with evolving democracy or our old friend market forces, but rather is a murderous clash of oligarchies over wealth, like Machiavelli's Borgias, or a Hollywood Godfather IV view of events.
  • (11) Jakarta’s politics – and Indonesia’s – is entrenched in an elitist oligarchy, in which party bosses or their corporate backers are the main financiers.
  • (12) Liberating individualism was transformed into exploitable atomisation, creative self-expression replaced by a depoliticised, desocialising consumerism that enabled the rise of a new oligarchy.
  • (13) That is called an oligarchy.” Sanders congratulated the crowd for “making history” by taking part in what the campaign believes is the largest online organizing event of the 2016 campaign so far.
  • (14) If they still come down we will need to take some sort of action.” “I’m still looking at legal action from the supreme court to stop them coming anyway.” The Party for Freedom posted on its website: “Today we face a battle against a corrupt political oligarchy that wants to restrict freedom of speech, and deny patriotic Australians the right to mark the 10nth Cronulla Riots anniversary in Cronulla.
  • (15) But in other cases, it has come with serious problems such as powerful oligarchies that wipe out competition, prevent local innovation, fuel corruption and seek rents.
  • (16) In the 1990s we encountered both anarchy and oligarchy.
  • (17) They desired, rather, that it be lived on a higher level than that of a serf, treated as an inconvenience by a moribund oligarchy.
  • (18) Jeremy Clarkson: big mouth strikes again BBC seeks to limit damage over Clarkson rant Jeremy Clarkson's One Show strike outburst - full text The Jeremy Clarkson moment: populism or oligarchy?
  • (19) And when they say competition, what you're actually left with is four or five – sometimes only three – companies, who barely compete with one another at all but instead operate as an unelected oligarchy.
  • (20) "If management and an existing board take on this power to hire and fire this ceases to be a co-operative and instead becomes little more than a self perpetuating, management-led, oligarchy," said Eyre.