What's the difference between aristocrat and autocrat?

Aristocrat


Definition:

  • (n.) One of the aristocracy or people of rank in a community; one of a ruling class; a noble.
  • (n.) One who is overbearing in his temper or habits; a proud or haughty person.
  • (n.) One who favors an aristocracy as a form of government, or believes the aristocracy should govern.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Wealthy, charismatic, aristocratic, 6ft 2ins and with a luxuriant moustache, he led a decadent life.
  • (2) The Aristocrats is a gag comedians tell each other in private.
  • (3) Wilde, however, with his high earnings and his flamboyance, made of precariousness something aristocratic; he was, if you’ll forgive the coinage, a precaristocrat.
  • (4) A rather eccentric populist-aristocratic campaign called You Forgot the Birds has also been launched against the RSPB led by the former cricketer Ian Botham, claiming that the charity neglects small songbirds in its veneration of birds of prey.
  • (5) After 12 years of Churchill, Eden and Macmillan, most people in the media were tired of aristocratic old men in tweed jackets.
  • (6) Fifty years later, Frostie, as his aristocratic nephews and nieces sometimes called him (his wife, Carina, was a daughter of the Duke of Norfolk), was still warding off brickbats from high-minded critics.
  • (7) As we speak the final 10 days of production are under way, meaning farewell to the show’s trump card, Highclere Castle, home of real-life aristocrats, the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon.
  • (8) (Shades of Louis XIV’s France, when aristocrats were exempt from tax.)
  • (9) Inspector Reg Wexford wasn’t an aristocrat or a brilliant Oxbridge wit.
  • (10) When the family arrived in England in 1938, his father anglicised the name to Lynton from an aristocratic German mouthful, though Norbert's elder brother scorned this refuge.
  • (11) Owning an island in the Pacific (Ellison owns Lanai in Hawaii) or the Caribbean (Branson owns Necker Island in the West Indies) shows your need for extreme privacy and luxury – the quintessential expression of a natural aristocrat.
  • (12) Even the king's private life, where rumours of lovers have always been rife, is no longer out of bounds – and neither is his friendship with a German aristocrat whose name is widely available in Spain and Germany, but whose lawyers say she denies any inappropriate relationship and have threatened legal action against any British newspapers that reveal her name.
  • (13) Clodia Metelli The epitome of the chic, sexy, scandalous aristocrat of 1st century BC Rome, Metelli was supposedly the "Lesbia" to whom the love-lorn poems of Catullus are addressed (and if so, a total ball-breaker).
  • (14) The idea of the vampire as a silver-tongued aristocrat, like Count Dracula, is mirrored in Irving's thespian mannerisms, and his fascination with theatrical villains.
  • (15) It will determine whether Russia will be dominated by an "aristocratic" or "arrestocratic" dynamic into the second decade of the 21st century.
  • (16) Ishiguro's flawed but introspective narrators are always fascinating portraits of unusual characters: in A Pale View from the Hills, the narrator is a Japanese widow living in England, The Remains of the Day is narrated by the butler of an Nazi-sympathising English aristocrat, and a callow English private detective is the central character in When We Were Orphans.
  • (17) Thinking about it, the best metaphor might be a row among one of those aristocratic families whose stately home is falling down around them.
  • (18) Is the collapse of the party that turned this country from an enclave of aristocratic power into a functioning democracy inevitable?
  • (19) The ITV drama, telling the story of the aristocratic Crawley family, is to return to screens later this year for the fifth series since its debut in 2010.
  • (20) "You have to remember that, back in India, we came from an aristocratic background," Desai says.

Autocrat


Definition:

  • (a.) An absolute sovereign; a monarch who holds and exercises the powers of government by claim of absolute right, not subject to restriction; as, Autocrat of all the Russias (a title of the Czar).
  • (a.) One who rules with undisputed sway in any company or relation; a despot.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Indeed, his reaction to the nationwide citizens' revolt reveals ominous parallels with another autocratic leader who has recently found himself in a tight spot: Vladimir Putin.
  • (2) A popular strain of foreign policy thought has long held that the US should be guided primarily by self-interest rather than human rights concerns: hence, since the US wants its Fifth Fleet to remain in Bahrain and believes ( with good reason ) that these dictators will serve US interests far better than if popular will in these countries prevails, it is right to prop up these autocrats.
  • (3) The elections, in May, were widely regarded to be the fairest held in Ethiopia , which has a long history of autocratic rule.
  • (4) Image: Courtesy of Pew Research Center The data also show why autocrats might have reason to fear open discussions in cyberspace.
  • (5) The policies of zero tolerance equip local and federal law-enforcement with increasingly autocratic powers of coercion and surveillance (the right to invade anybody's privacy, bend the rules of evidence, search barns, stop motorists, inspect bank records, tap phones) and spread the stain of moral pestilence to ever larger numbers of people assumed to be infected with reefer madness – anarchists and cheap Chinese labour at the turn of the 20th century, known homosexuals and suspected communists in the 1920s, hippies and anti-Vietnam war protesters in the 1960s, nowadays young black men sentenced to long-term imprisonment for possession of a few grams of short-term disembodiment.
  • (6) Britain's high commissioner described him as "becoming ever more autocratic and intolerant of criticism" – and was expelled in retaliation .
  • (7) It reinforces the fears held by many that a counter-revolution is well underway, setting the country back on the path of another long autocratic rule.
  • (8) Business leaders sometimes fall foul of the regime in autocratic countries such as China, and when they do, they risk having their assets appropriated by the state .
  • (9) A leading academic who taught on the London School of Economics' controversial Libya programme has blamed the British government for encouraging educational links with the autocratic state.
  • (10) Beyond the sumptuous lifestyle spreads in glossies or the gift-strewn shop windows at Harrods and Selfridges, and Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop website , shows like Downton Abbey keep us in thrall to the idea of moolah, mansions and autocratic power.
  • (11) But the Establishment also had a more interesting and benign meaning: a network of liberal-minded people who could counteract the excesses of autocratic and short-sighted governments.
  • (12) Trump approves of working with autocrats, at least, and would probably make fast friends with the galaxy’s less reputable leaders – especially those who share his interests, eg crimelord Jabba the Hutt, who lives in an ostentatious palace , loves parties , demeans women and feeds a literal Rancor .
  • (13) Using multivariate analysis, it was found that 'autocratic management style' was a strong predictor of job dissatisfaction, while 'qualitative and quantitative work overload' was the major source of lack of mental well-being.
  • (14) The political assassinations two years earlier had threatened the new democracy taking root after the autocratic president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was toppled in 2011.
  • (15) China has become increasingly diligent about quashing critical voices, apparently fearful that they could spark protests like those that unseated autocrats in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya last year.
  • (16) While the NDP was disbanded and its offices shut down in 2011, months after an uprising toppled the autocratic Mubarak, its members could still run in elections.
  • (17) Bingu, who has built strong ties with China, forgives but does not forget the leaked diplomatic cable from the then British high commissioner, Fergus Cochrane-Dyet, that branded him "autocratic", resulting in tit-for-tat expulsions.
  • (18) With billions of dollars worth of assets of Muammar Gaddafi frozen by the UN and member countries, and other legal moves to recover the wealth of deposed autocrats such as Tunisia's Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, the drive to seize billions plundered by corrupt leaders has never been higher.
  • (19) For the next quarter century, until the 1979 Islamic revolution, the US government supported the autocratic Shah – whose regime also enjoyed close relations with Israel.
  • (20) The autocrat in the Kremlin is rightly worried about Euromaidan – he knows that it can serve as a prelude to an "Eroploshchad" in Moscow: that is, the success of Euromaidan represents an opportunity for democratic forces within Russia.