Totalitarian

How to spell totalitarian

12 letters · 6 syllables

How to pronounce totalitarian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does totalitarian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to a system of government that demands complete control over public and private life and permits no political opposition.
2. nounA person who supports or advocates a system of total state control.

Totalitarian in a sentence

• adjective

  The documentary examined how a totalitarian regime monitored every citizen.

• noun

  The columnist accused the new leader of being a closet totalitarian.

• adjective

  Censorship of the press is a hallmark of a totalitarian state.

• noun

  As a committed totalitarian, he dismissed individual freedoms as a weakness.

Where does totalitarian come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This word traces back to the Latin totus, meaning 'whole' or 'entire', the same root that gives us 'total' and 'totality'. The modern political term, however, was minted in early twentieth-century Italy: critics and then supporters of Mussolini used the Italian totalitario to describe a state that claimed total, all-embracing control over public and private life. English borrowed the idea in the 1920s, forming 'totalitarian' on the familiar English pattern of words like 'authoritarian' and 'humanitarian'. The sense hardened during the 1930s and 1940s as it was applied to fascist and communist regimes alike, coming to mean a system that tolerates no rival parties and demands complete obedience. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: writers reach for 'total' and then must remember the smooth '-itarian' tail, with a single t before the i, not a doubled one.

How the word is built

• total (from Latin totus: whole, entire)
• -itarian (adjective/noun suffix on the pattern of 'authoritarian')