theocracy

From theo- +‎ -cracy, originally from Ancient Greek θεοκρατία (theokratía, “rule of (a) God”), a term coined in the 1st century by Josephus (Against Apion 2.17) in reference to the ancient Israelite polity under the Mosaic covenant. Attested in English from the 1620s, first by John Donne in A Sermon upon the fifth of November 1622. being the Anniversary celebration of our Deliverance from the Powder Treason: "The Jews were onely under a Theocratie, an immediate government of God..."

• IPA^(key): /θiːˈɒkɹəsi/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Homophone: theocrasy

theocracy (countable and uncountable, plural theocracies)

1. Government under the control of a state religion.

   Hypernym: ideocracy

   Hyponym: sharia law

   Near-synonym: clericocracy

   Tibet was a Buddhist theocracy ruled by the Dalai Lama prior to Chinese annexation.

   The Vatican City State is a sovereign city-state and a Christian theocracy ruled by the Pope.

   • 2023 December 2, Frederick Studemann, quoting Paul Lynch, “Civilisation is so easily lost”, in FT Weekend, Life & Arts, page 11:

     Lynch certainly seems to think to. “We feel liberated from the prism of the past,” he says. “Ireland was a theocracy.”

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:theocracy.
2. Rule by a god.
   • For quotations using this term, see Citations:theocracy.

• theocrat
• theocratic