(n.) A plant of the genus Anagallis, of which one species (A. arvensis) has small flowers, usually scarlet, but sometimes purple, blue, or white, which speedily close at the approach of bad weather.
Example Sentences:
(1) Even if Clegg's ideas are proving changeable, the party faithful will ensure he remains a yellow rather than a scarlet or blue pimpernel – any decision that affects party independence will have to be agreed by three-quarters of their MPs.
(2) She had secret interviews with Nelson Mandela , then known as the "Black Pimpernel", while he was underground in 1961.
(3) Though Mandela shares little with master spy George Smiley, he earned the nickname "the Black Pimpernel" as he evaded the authorities, Irvin noted.
(4) In the new BBC mockumentary W1A he is known as "his Tonyship, Lord Director General'' and is as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel.
(5) Political commentators such as David Marquand have dubbed him the Scarlet Pimpernel.
(6) Straight after the verdict, Mandela went underground, earning himself a reputation as the "black pimpernel" as he stayed one step ahead of the authorities.
(7) An attempt to pin down the Pimpernel by asking him to define his enemies and allies is only partially successful.
(8) Snowden, the most significant whistleblower of modern times, briefly amused London when he turned scarlet pimpernel in the summer; then the capital was intrigued when David Miranda was seized by Heathrow police on bogus "terrorism" charges.
(9) Pimpernel) exhibits a low specificity for the organic moiety of synthetic pyro- and triphosphates.
(10) He was the pimpernel, the odd man out, the great escaper, the prisoner of Rio, the lovable rogue on the run.
Tyranny
Definition:
(n.) The government or authority of a tyrant; a country governed by an absolute ruler; hence, arbitrary or despotic exercise of power; exercise of power over subjects and others with a rigor not authorized by law or justice, or not requisite for the purposes of government.
(n.) Cruel government or discipline; as, the tyranny of a schoolmaster.
(n.) Severity; rigor; inclemency.
Example Sentences:
(1) Any unilateral action by the president seemed sure to inflame gun advocates, who argue that gun sales are protected under the second amendment and who equate gun control with tyranny.
(2) But within a few kilometres of these monuments to tyranny stand symbols of renewal – rows of solar panels bringing stable electricity to the homes of local people for the first time – and with them the chance of improving their lives.
(3) Hitchens responded to counter-examples of secular tyranny in the Soviet Union and China by saying: It is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists.
(4) Toynbee then claims that "league table tyranny" will increasingly sideline non-core subjects.
(5) The regime in Eritrea is, in short, a secretive, reclusive, authoritarian tyranny, which is ruthlessly controlled by president Afewerki.
(6) Before in Russia everybody had a gun and then the communists came and took them away and we had tyranny.
(7) Of course some writers can't wait to have a tyranny to work on.
(8) The way things are happening, it’s hard not to conclude that there is amount of dictatorship, there is an amount of tyranny, there is an amount of authoritarianism,” he told the Guardian in the capital, Harare.
(9) From the opening of the very first refuges and support services in the 70s, women have described the control and tyranny they experience as central to abuse, and more defining than the physical violence that sometimes accompanies it.
(10) Time to leave: Egypt may be liberated from tyranny but there was a chance the message hadn't got through to Sharm el-Sheikh.
(11) Democracy has never meant the tyranny of the simple majority, much less the tyranny of the mob.” It was argued that we could not leave the final word on such momentous decisions to ordinary voters: they didn’t know what they really wanted, or they had been tricked into wanting something that would hurt them, or they were too ignorant to make informed choices, or maybe they quite simply wanted the wrong thing.
(12) Alison, meanwhile, is a prime example of what Gilbert describes as someone freed from “the Tyranny of the Bride”: having done it once, and particularly having had a child, she feels no overwhelming need to do it again.
(13) Two European Championships and the World Cup after a tyrannial reign, the squad is buried at the Maracana with the same noise of a giant collapsing."
(14) The government was taking the “way of tyranny” by stopping the House of Commons from holding the executive to account, he said.
(15) "While not everyone necessarily agrees with Tawakkul's role in the protest movement today, her role since 2007 in the struggle against tyranny and injustice, promoting freedom of speech and women's rights is undisputed.
(16) I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people by the whites.
(17) Treating AGIs like any other computer programs would constitute brainwashing, slavery and tyranny.
(18) Her reluctance to take in Britain's UN quota of 10,000 was all the more embarrassing in that it came after Thatcher had lectured the Soviet premier, Alexey Kosygin, on the plight of the Vietnamese boat people after fleeing "the tyranny of communism".
(19) Unlike in 1940, Britain wasn't threatened with invasion or occupation in 1914, and Europe's people were menaced by the machinations of their masters, rather than an atavistic tyranny.
(20) Resisting tyranny was the central premise of the republican (with a small r) tradition of political theory on which the 18th-century American revolution rests.