Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar — another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word:
HEGEMONY
A word your are most likely to encounter in articles about politics, particularly international politics,
hegemony
(pronounced huh-JEM-oh-nee) refers to one country's or social groups' dominance over others — the kind of word you expect to see in an article by Noam Chomsky or a formal statement of the People's Republic of China. We get it in English from the Greek
hegemonia
, which in turn comes from
hegemon
, "leader."
Hegemon
has been naturalized into English to identify the party that holds sway over the others.
Example: "The basic principle is that hegemony is more important than survival. Hardly novel, the principle has been amply illustrated in the past half-century." From "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance" by Noam Chomsky. (See?)