" autocrats "

[Noun]  | "au*to*crat" | \ ˈȯ-tə-ˌkrat \

1: a person (such as a monarch) ruling with unlimited authority

2: one who has undisputed influence or power

Origin: 1762 ;

 Borrowed from French & Greek; French autocrate, borrowed from Greek autokratḗs "ruling by itself (of a mind), with sole authority (for a task)," from auto- {see: |auto-|auto-} + -kratēs, adjective derivative of kratéō, krateîn "to be strong or powerful, have command, rule," derivative of krátos "strength, power, authority" {mat|hard:1|};

  * Note : The Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, notes that the earliest English attestation of autocrat, from 1762, precedes the earliest French attestation by six years. The source in question, the newspaper The Public Advertiser, uses the word as part of the title of Catherine II, "Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias." "Autocrat" here most likely translates, with the loss of the feminine suffix, French autocratrice, a word used in the French titles of three Russian empresses: Anna (1730-40), Elizaveta Petrovna (1741-62), and Catherine (1762-1796). The masculine correspondent was autocrateur, which corresponds not to Greek autokratḗs, but rather to the adjective autokrátōr, which is better attested in ancient Greek in a wider array of meanings: "independent, with full authority, in control, with sole authority," and in the early Roman empire is used as the Greek equivalent of Latin imperātor (see: {imperator|imperator}, {emperor|emperor}). Indeed, though the etymology above showing borrowing from autokratḗs is formally acceptable, English autocrate may more likely be a back-formation from {autocracy|autocracy} (in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the meanings "self-control" and "absolute power," and also spelled autocrasy, autocraty) (compare {aristocrat|aristocrat}, {democrat|democrat}). The Russian equivalents of French autocrateur and autocratrice were samoderžec and samoderžica (compare samoderžavie "autocracy"), which themselves represent calques on Greek autokrátōr, though at a much earlier period (Old Church Slavic samodrŭžĭcĭ, samodrŭžitelĭ, from samo- "self" and drŭžati "to hold, have, control").;

[Noun]  | "autocrats" 

[Noun]  | "autocrat"