What's the difference between dictatorial and oppressive?

Dictatorial


Definition:

  • (a.) Pertaining or suited to a dictator; absolute.
  • (a.) Characteristic of a dictator; imperious; dogmatical; overbearing; as, a dictatorial tone or manner.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But concerns about a slowing economy, jobs, civil rights and a lack of progress in the Kurdish peace process appear to have combined with worries that Erdoğan could assume quasi-dictatorial powers to thwart the president’s ambitions.
  • (2) Even if the move seemed dictatorial in the short term, it served to enshrine a constitution that in the long-term actually curtails Morsi's power – which to the Brotherhood makes his actions well-intentioned, if clumsy.
  • (3) Supporters of the accused men say their alleged crimes were trumped up by a dictatorial regime which feigned openness during the electoral campaign only to brutally suppress dissent when it saw the scale of public anger.
  • (4) It was a tragedy suffered by those trapped in a totalitarian and dictatorial system with no jangmadang to turn to.
  • (5) But to shape the future we need to understand the past.” One might expect that those words were aimed at Peter Thiel, the Facebook board member who has bucked Silicon Valley political orthodoxy by backing Donald Trump’s xenophobic, Islamophobic, sexist, anti-science, and increasingly dictatorial campaign for president.
  • (6) But the economic success story couldn’t mask the accusations that he was totalitarian and dictatorial – that he, however he could, crushed any political opposition, inside his party and out.
  • (7) I want to make it very clear that I will never rule this country without your mandate and I will never cheat.” The Gambia is one of Africa’s smallest and least important countries, so its unexpected shift to democracy will not bring political or economic pressure to bear on dictatorial neighbours or more distant nations.
  • (8) And to help promote this thoroughly anti-democratic measure, the junta has enlisted the judiciary, sullying the very bedrock of democracy.” The prospect of Prayuth’s dictatorial rule being extended indefinitely is not one that is welcomed in Washington.
  • (9) George Soros's Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa warns that Malawi is heading towards an "authoritarian era" under the "dictatorial whims of one man".
  • (10) Machar accused his rival of "dictatorial tendencies" and said that members of his Nuer community were being targeted.
  • (11) But it’s not that I believe those numbers should be dictatorial – we need to have an open discussion.
  • (12) Viewed in this context, the raiding of NGO offices in Egypt on Thursday is not especially surprising – though, of course, one of the main goals of the revolution was to put an end to such dictatorial practices, and the raiding of 17 NGOs in a single day was unprecedented, even during the Mubarak years.
  • (13) Man jailed for 30 years in Thailand for insulting the monarchy on Facebook Read more The ruling regime – the National Council for Peace and Order led by prime minister general Prayut Chan-ocha – took power in a coup d’état and promised to restore democracy within a year, but instead “exercised increasingly dictatorial power and continued to systematically repress fundamental rights and freedoms”.
  • (14) The leader of Karachi’s dominant political party has been accused by a respected former mayor of being an Indian agent and a dictatorial drunkard who has mismanaged the affairs of Pakistan’s biggest city from his base in north London.
  • (15) But his controlling personality meant some commanders deserted, and his dictatorial leadership prompted the breakaway Ansaru faction, according to a senior security official.
  • (16) But it is not economics, nor even his alleged dictatorial tendencies, that makes Modi such a polarising figure.
  • (17) "The conclusion is inescapable that the South African troops were deployed to defend the faltering and dictatorial Bozizé regime."
  • (18) They were the elite cadre of female bodyguards who surrounded Colonel Muammar Gaddafi for more than 20 years, becoming almost synonymous with his idiosyncratic dictatorial rule.
  • (19) While the conflict in that country is driven by multiple factors – a dictatorial regime, regional spillovers of extremism, an international community that has shifted between vacillation and interference – there is no doubt that the level of violence in that country is a direct result of decades of arms transfers to the region.
  • (20) They see it as part of the president’s attempt to acquire quasi-dictatorial powers at the expense of parliament and representative democracy.

Oppressive


Definition:

  • (a.) Unreasonably burdensome; unjustly severe, rigorous, or harsh; as, oppressive taxes; oppressive exactions of service; an oppressive game law.
  • (a.) Using oppression; tyrannical; as, oppressive authority or commands.
  • (a.) Heavy; overpowering; hard to be borne; as, oppressive grief or woe.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) I hope this movement will continue and spread for it has within itself the power to stand up to fascism, be victorious in the face of extremism and say no to oppressive political powers everywhere.” Appearing via videolink from Tehran, and joined by London mayor Sadiq Khan and Palme d’Or winner Mike Leigh, Farhadi said: “We are all citizens of the world and I will endeavour to protect and spread this unity.” The London screening of The Salesman on Sunday evening wasintended to be a show of unity and strength against Trump’s travel ban, which attempted to block arrivals in the US from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.
  • (2) Much less obvious – except in the fictional domain of the C Thomas Howell film Soul Man – is why someone would want to “pass” in the other direction and voluntarily take on the weight of racial oppression.
  • (3) But some warn that oppression of the minority is heading towards breaking point.
  • (4) Through small and large acts of deprivation and destruction we follow the process: the removal of hope, of dignity, of luxury, of necessity, of self; the reduction of a man to a hoarder of grey slabs of bread and the scrapings of a soup bowl (wonderfully told all this, with a novelist's gift for detail and sometimes very nearly comic surprise), to the confinement of a narrow bed – in which there is "not even any room to be afraid" – with a stranger who doesn't speak your language, to the cruel illogicality of hating a fellow victim of oppression more than you hate the oppressor himself – one torment following another, and even the bleak comfort of thinking you might have touched rock bottom denied you as, when the most immediate cause of a particular stress comes to an end, "you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others".
  • (5) The terrorists know that if Iraq and Afghanistan survive their assault, come through their travails, seize the opportunity the future offers, then those countries will stand not just as nations liberated from oppression, but as a lesson to humankind everywhere and a profound antidote to the poison of religious extremism.
  • (6) But there are very oppressed people here and I have to stay with them.
  • (7) Ukip accuses Theresa May of condoning these “symbols of the oppression of women”.
  • (8) Similarly at world level, it considers the struggles and efforts by the miserable and oppressed nations for achievement of their legitimate rights and independence as their due rights, because people have the right to liberate their countries from colonialism and obtain their rights.
  • (9) He added that the producers were also seeking to educate a new generation about the system of apartheid through which South Africa's white minority oppressed the black majority for more than 40 years up to 1990.
  • (10) "This false notion of choice, which is increasingly used to justify the oppression of women," says Ellis.
  • (11) The study of 106 pregnant women engaged in microbiological synthesis production revealed the tendency to increasing genitalia contamination by Candida yeast-like fungi, including fungi-protein producers, and also oppression of immunologic reactivity in comparison with nonpregnant women and the control group.
  • (12) A statement from al-Shabaab on Monday said the latest attack – the deadliest since Westgate – was revenge for the "Kenyan government's brutal oppression of Muslims in Kenya through coercion, intimidation and extrajudicial killings of Muslim scholars".
  • (13) A 46-year-old woman occasionally experienced palpitation of short duration and chest oppression since 1977.
  • (14) "We should oppose the practices of the big bullying the small, the strong domineering over the weak and the rich oppressing the poor."
  • (15) Behind the dancing girls and schmaltzy lyrics that usually characterise pop songs, these men act as the all-oppressing eye of the industry: telling female singers that weight loss and sexual objectification are the only feasible routes to stardom; stripping down women in music videos to their underwear while leaving their male counterparts untouched.
  • (16) Choosing the example of prisoners' voting rights, which the ECHR has ordered the UK to implement, the supreme court justice observed that the issue "has nothing to do with the oppression of vulnerable minorities".
  • (17) On Sunday Assange said: "Will it [the US] return to and reaffirm the revolutionary values it was founded on, or will it lurch off the precipice, dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive world?"
  • (18) A 62 year old man, who had underlying diseases of pneumoconiosis and hypertensive heart disease, visited Chikuho Rosai Hospital complaining of chest oppression and general fatigue on Feb. 7, 1987.
  • (19) We did not perform a sexy version of oppression or create a teasing "naughty" campaign.
  • (20) He is sexism, male domination, and oppression against women personified.