acephalous
adjective
Simple meaning
A system of society without centralised state authority, where power is welded amongst groups of community entities e.g.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
uhsehfuhluhsSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
əˈsɛfələs
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
social sciencespolitical sciencesociology
A system of society without centralised state authority, where power is welded amongst groups of community entities e.g. clans. Without a leader or chief.
Having no head.
Lacking the first portion of the text. (of a manuscript)
zoologyapplied to bivalve mollusks
Without a distinct head.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (social sciences, political science, sociology) A system of society without centralised state authority, where power is welded amongst groups of community entities e.g. clans. Without a leader or chief.
Used this way, acephalous is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in science and government or politics contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Science
- Government/politics
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.