1. The severe deprivation of a natural right.
2. The accumulation of all powers — the legislative, executive, and judicial — in the same hands (whether few or many). • Sense 2 expresses the Madisonian view of tyranny, to be found in The Federalist, No. 47.
3. Arbitrary or despotic government; the severe and autocratic exercise of sovereign power, whether vested constitutionally in one ruler or usurped by that ruler by breaking down the division and distribution of governmental powers. — tyrannical, tyrannous, adj.
