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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

heterarchy.

The rule of an alien; rule from without; government by an extraterritorial power.

10 characters4 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈhɛtəɹɑːkɪ/Received-Pronunciation
  1. The rule of an alien; rule from without; government by an extraterritorial power.

    uncountable
    Despite installing puppet governments in the marches, the subjects of the empire’s conquered territories were still very conscious of living under heterarchy.
  2. An example of this government.

    countable
    The proposed liberation of our largely undeveloped economy goes too far — the resulting foreign dominance of our markets would make us a heterarchy.
  3. A system of organization where the elements of the organization are unranked (non-hierarchical) or where they possess the potential to be ranked a number of different ways.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From heter- (“other, different”) + -archy (“rule”).; equivalent to Katharevousa ἑτεραρχία (eterarchía) / Dimotiki ετεραρχία (eterarchía).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.