MEANING
1. Authority or power to rule over a territory, people, or other things.
2. A territory or realm under the rule of a particular authority.
3. A historically self-governing country within the British Empire and later the Commonwealth.
Use it for
describing a ruler’s power; giving control an expansive or solemn tone; portraying a struggle over who holds authority; extending an image of rule to a nonhuman forceDistinguishes authority over people from the territory governed and from a specific historical category of self-government. Writing functions: Power / Territorial scope.
Words that belong together
- dominion over a territory
- assert dominion
- exercise dominion
On the page
The crown claimed dominion over islands its officials had never seen.
Within the ruined observatory, silence held undisputed dominion.
No road connected the capital with the northern dominions.
The map showed a dominion shaped less by mountains than by the reach of its forts.
The chapter traces the constitutional implications of dominion status.
Word forms
- Base
- dominion
Usage notes
Usually uncountable for power or control; countable dominion, plural dominions, for a territory or the historical political category. Register: formal. Commonness: uncommon (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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