anarchy
noun
Simple meaning
A society being without authorities or an authoritative governing body.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
anerkeeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈænɚki
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.
noun
uncountable
The state of a society being without authorities or an authoritative governing body.
countable
A chaotic and confusing absence of any form of political authority or government.
Confusion in general; disorder.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A chaotic and confusing absence of any form of political authority or government.
Used this way, anarchy is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in government or politics contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Confusing or complicated
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Government/politics
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use anarchy
- “Without laws or a government, the city quickly descended into anarchy.”noun
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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.