# hegemony

Pronunciation: say "hi-JEM-uh-nee" /hɪˈd͡ʒɛm.ə.ni/

## Noun

1. Dominance or controlling influence over others, especially a nation's power over other nations or a political group's over a society.
   - Simple: Power or control over others, especially when one country or political group leads and controls the rest.
   - _After the war, the country sought economic hegemony over the entire region._
   - _Historians compare the rival hegemonies of Athens and Sparta in ancient Greece._
2. Dominance of one social group over another in which the ruling group wins some degree of consent from those it rules, rather than relying on force alone.
   - Simple: Power one group has over another because the weaker group partly accepts it, not only because of force.
   - _Through schools, newspapers, and churches, the ruling class maintained a cultural hegemony that made its values seem like common sense._
   - _The two parties competed for hegemony, each trying to persuade voters that its view of the nation was the natural one._

## Origin

Ancient Greek ἡγέομαι (hēgéomai, "to lead") gave ἡγεμών (hēgemṓn, "leader, guide, commander"), and from that came ἡγεμονία (hēgemonía), meaning "supremacy, leadership, chief command." German Hegemonie influenced how the word was used in the early 19th century.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/hegemony (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).