What's the difference between despot and dictator?

Despot


Definition:

  • (n.) A master; a lord; especially, an absolute or irresponsible ruler or sovereign.
  • (n.) One who rules regardless of a constitution or laws; a tyrant.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Right now, with Kabila already 10 years in power and looking immovable, despotism seems to have democracy on the ropes.
  • (2) All the while, a long list of corrupt and venal despots turned their rule into virtual kleptocracies and stole their children's futures.
  • (3) One is the stubborn mystery of how a giant of its liberation movements, an intellectual who showed forgiveness and magnanimity years before Mandela emerged from jail, could turn into the living caricature of despotism.
  • (4) If it fails to do so, it will rightly stand accused of placing a higher value on its alliance with murderous despots than the security of its own people.
  • (5) To crush any residual affinity for the monarchy, British propaganda against Thibaw “went into high gear”, said Thant Mtint-U, painting the monarch as an ogre, despot and drunkard.
  • (6) It took Harry Guy Bartholomew, first editorial director and then chairman after Rothermere unloaded his shares, to run the business on despotic lines and, with a mixture of flair and vindictive thuggery, create one of the great popular newspapers.
  • (7) The Red Army attacked despotic gentry and evil landlords, people who exploited our country and exploited individuals," she says, recalling her reasons for joining.
  • (8) The tabloid conclusion is that the North's leaders are crazed – Kim Jong-un is a "deranged despot", the Sun wrote on Friday – while the Team America version is that they are idiotic.
  • (9) Its words are an attack on tyrants and despots, and a call for liberty.
  • (10) Even though the event was celebrating victory over fascism, some of the world’s most notorious despots were in attendance, including Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov, Turkmenistan’s Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.
  • (11) "We couldn't believe our eyes," grinned Shamad, recalling the sight of Tunisia's ousted despot, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, fleeing a land he had ruled for 23 years.
  • (12) When it comes, the fall of a famous despot sends a shiver that is felt across the world.
  • (13) Jacobs checked Moses's mad worship of the car and his despotic excesses.
  • (14) In 1989, according to the Washington Post , he was hired to massage the image of the despot Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) for $1m a year.
  • (15) Responding to suggestions by pro-coup pundits that he should be more statesman-like, he was adamant: “I won’t change my personality, because I am a person with multiple personalities.” As with other interesting despots, none of this affects his ability to wield absolute power.
  • (16) What of the jobs that we’re told would be endangered if we adopted the exotic policy of not selling arms to despots?
  • (17) As Assange noted drily: "It's nicer, particularly given the frequency of equatorial despotism, to be tortured in the computer room."
  • (18) In an age of infinite European promise - summed up by the annus mirabilis of 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell and the countries of eastern Europe and former Yugoslavia freed themselves from Soviet-style despotism - Slobodan Milosevic, who has died aged 64, was the wild card.
  • (19) In championing the oppressed, deterring aggression, curbing the excesses of despots, challenging the victimisation of scapegoats, tackling poverty or preventing genocide, the international community still has a long way to go.
  • (20) Pogrund and cameraman Dewald Aukema pick up not only the whirlwind nature of that first head-of-state visit, but the exotic and breathtaking beauty of Africa and Mandela's buttoned lip as he visits the lavish basilicas built by despots on the land of the poor.

Dictator


Definition:

  • (n.) One who dictates; one who prescribes rules and maxims authoritatively for the direction of others.
  • (n.) One invested with absolute authority; especially, a magistrate created in times of exigence and distress, and invested with unlimited power.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It is my desperate hope that we close out of town.” In the book, God publishes his own 'It Getteth Better' video and clarifies his original writings on homosexuality: I remember dictating these lines to Moses; and afterward looking up to find him staring at me in wide-eyed astonishment, and saying, "Thou do knowest that when the Israelites read this, they're going to lose their fucking shit, right?"
  • (2) There are many examples to support his assertion, yet for the most part, it is celebrities who dictate what images can be published and what stories should be told.
  • (3) Dictated by underlying physicochemical constraints, deceived at times by the lulling tones of the siren entropy, and constantly vulnerable to the vagaries of other more pervasive forms of biological networking and information transfer encoded in the genes of virus and invading microorganisms, protein biorecognition in higher life forms, and particularly in mammals, represents the finely tuned molecular avenues for the genome to transfer its information to the next generation.
  • (4) In Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia – three countries that toppled three dictators nearly four years ago – 2014 marked something of a comeback for the concept of strongman leadership.
  • (5) Ernst had adopted conservative positions during the primary battle: she called the president a dictator and said the Environmental Protection Agency should be abolished.
  • (6) Some objected, saying we should not admit a dictator's son.
  • (7) 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.
  • (8) The "size principle" is known to dictate the sequence of recruitment of motor neurons during voluntary or reflex activation of muscles.
  • (9) Thus, cleavage site selection is likely to be dictated by specific noncovalent DNA-protein interactions.
  • (10) "Sometimes a handshake is just a handshake, but when the leader of the free world shakes the bloody hand of a ruthless dictator like Raúl Castro , it becomes a propaganda coup for the tyrant," said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican Congress member in Florida, told the US secretary of state, John Kerry.
  • (11) Aldi is able to order this selection, more than 90% of which is own-label products, through bulk-buying, while dictating the package size in order to fit the maximum amount of goods on its shelves and lorries in order to keep costs low.
  • (12) This choice was made on the basis of a clinical and angiographic estimate of the possible consequences of vessel occlusion, or dictated by sound inoperability of the patient.
  • (13) This unusual nature dictates an enhanced awareness for proper management.
  • (14) said a colleague, referring to the former Chadian dictator, who had been living in gilded exile in Dakar since his overthrow in December 1990.
  • (15) North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un is also aware of the fate of other dictators who lacked nuclear weapons or were forced to give them up.
  • (16) Jason Kreis and the unremarkable success of Real Salt Lake Read more Kreis had built a serial playoff team in Salt Lake by defining a philosophical approach to the churning personnel turnover that the league’s roster-building restrictions tend to dictate.
  • (17) Combat conditions or mass casualty situations may dictate a delay in surgery because of higher priorities or lack of surgical facilities.
  • (18) So, logic would dictate that if Greeks are genuinely in favour of reform – and opinion polls have consistently shown wide support for many of the structural changes needed – they would be foolish to give these two parties another chance.
  • (19) Plibersek’s spokesman said on Friday: “Who is Mr Brandis to dictate the language on the Middle East peace negotiations?” The spokesman said the intervention this week amounted to “another foreign policy embarrassment for the Abbott government, which is why [Brandis] was forced by the foreign minister and the Foreign Affairs Department to rush out a statement about his inept pronouncements.” Labor ran into its own controversy earlier this year when Bill Shorten appeared to telegraph a shift in policy around the description of settlements in a major speech to the Zionist Federation of Australia.
  • (20) Killian Fox Growing your own: the basics What you decide to plant will be somewhat dictated by the space you have.