- tyranny
- c.1368, "cruel or unjust use of power," from O.Fr. tyrannie (13c.), from L.L. tyrannia "tyranny," from Gk. tyrannia "rule of a tyrant," from tyrannos "master" (see tyrant). Tyrannize is first attested 1494, from M.Fr. tyranniser (14c.); tyrannical was formed 1538 (tyrannic was used in this sense from 1491).
- bureaucracy
- 1818, from Fr. bureaucratie, from bureau "office," lit. "desk" (see bureau) + Gk. suffix -kratia denoting "power of;" coined by Fr. economist Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay (1712-1759) on model of democratie, aristocratie.
"That vast net-work of administrative tyranny ... that system of bureaucracy, which leaves no free agent in all France, except for the man at Paris who pulls the wires." [J.S. Mill, "Westminster Review" XXVIII, 1837]