police state

noun

1. a nation in which the police, especially a secret police, summarily suppresses any social, economic, or political act that conflicts with governmental policy.

police state

noun

1. a state or country in which a repressive government maintains control through the police

police state

1. A nation whose rulers maintain order and obedience by the threat of police or military force; one with a brutal, arbitrary government.

Word History and Origins

Origin of police state¹

First recorded in 1860–65

Example Sentences

“So long as we have requirements about keeping lists clean, and so long as we don’t have a police state that has a single database with all of our names in it, like in much of the rest of the world, including democratic nations, we’re going to come across these sorts of problems,” said Charles Stewart III, director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.

From Salon

Trump’s language is designed to fracture the civic contract, pit citizens against each other, create the conditions for civil war, and pave the way for a society ruled by fear and a police state.

From Salon

His critics, of course, responded that the low crime rate was achieved through intimidation, that Castro’s Cuba was – and still remains – a police state which brokered no criticism of its communist-led government, and which rode roughshod over its opponents’ human rights.

From BBC

He pointed to the "authoritarian and arguably fascist regimes" Black Americans lived under post-slavery and Reconstruction: antagonism from a police state, having to contend with propaganda that held the natural leaders were white, Jim Crow politics that rejected Black women's bodily autonomy, particularly with respect to sexual violence and forced sterilization.

From Salon

One wrong move and — boom! — we’re Gilead, the police state in “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

From Los Angeles Times