What's the difference between despot and tyrant?

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.

Tyrant


Definition:

  • (n.) An absolute ruler; a sovereign unrestrained by law or constitution; a usurper of sovereignty.
  • (n.) Specifically, a monarch, or other ruler or master, who uses power to oppress his subjects; a person who exercises unlawful authority, or lawful authority in an unlawful manner; one who by taxation, injustice, or cruel punishment, or the demand of unreasonable services, imposes burdens and hardships on those under his control, which law and humanity do not authorize, or which the purposes of government do not require; a cruel master; an oppressor.
  • (n.) Any one of numerous species of American clamatorial birds belonging to the family Tyrannidae; -- called also tyrant bird.
  • (v. i.) To act like a tyrant; to play the tyrant; to tyrannical.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The fall of a tyrant is usually the cause of popular rejoicing followed by public vengeance.
  • (2) While the Spielberg of popular myth is Mr Nice Guy, Lean was known as an obsessive, cantankerous tyrant who didn't much like actors and was only truly happy locked away in the editing suite.
  • (3) "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.
  • (4) One of the two last strongholds of Gaddafi loyalists, the town of Bani Walid, has finally been contained, Libya's interim government has claimed, leaving only parts of the ousted tyrant's birthplace out of rebel reach.
  • (5) So long as tyrants and terrorists chase innocents around the globe, we must offer them refuge.
  • (6) Thinking the fatwa was little more than the empty threat of a faraway tyrant, Theroux called out to Rushdie: "Next week we'll be back here for you!"
  • (7) The phrase "time to water the tree of liberty" - a reference to a famous quotation from Thomas Jefferson, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" - is also frequently used by a right wing group called Stormfront , motto White Pride World Wide.
  • (8) Its words are an attack on tyrants and despots, and a call for liberty.
  • (9) He is a tyrant and he needs to be expelled from the newspaper."
  • (10) Other tyrants, including, Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, appeared equally unconcerned about the ICC.
  • (11) Fearful of an imminent military breakthrough by Iran, the agency passed on Iranian troop positions to the Iraqi tyrant, " fully aware that Hussein's military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin ".
  • (12) "The Tyrant's In His Pants," said the Sun's headline, while the Post opted for "Butcher of Sagdad" against an image of Hussein wearing nothing more than a pair of white Y-fronts.
  • (13) A toy autocracy may easily invite a real one; it was recently revealed that nuclear war would have made the monarch a genuine tyrant with the power to appoint a prime minister without an election, although it is hard to imagine Elizabeth II – with her rugs bearing a knitted royal crest, and her tiny dogs – as Gaius Julius Caesar.
  • (14) On the face of it, algorithms – "step-by-step procedures for calculations" – seem unlikely candidates for the role of tyrant.
  • (15) He might, according to people who know him, be a nerdy academic, but he was also a tyrant, according to Blanchflower , a “my way or the highway” boss who ran the place with an iron fist.
  • (16) If we’re supposed to become nails in the coffin of a tyrant, I’d like to become one of those nails.
  • (17) Devout Muslims consider it a sacrilege for infidels to depose a Muslim tyrant and occupy Muslim lands — no matter how well intentioned the infidels or malevolent the tyrant.
  • (18) Mobutu Nzanga said he is proud of his father, despite the commonly held view that he was a kleptocratic tyrant.
  • (19) The letter says : “As rabbis and cantors we regularly read the story of a band of refugees who escaped from a tyrant with only the clothes on their backs and a bit of flat bread.
  • (20) In a video posted on social media on Sunday, a man purporting to be Shekau addresses the “tyrants of Nigeria in particular and the west of Africa in general,” saying: “You broadcast the news and published it in your media outlets that you injured me and killed me, and here I am.” The speaker says: “I will not be killed until my time comes.” Last month, Nigeria’s air force said it had killed senior members of Boko Haram and that Shekau had been injured .