Meaning & use
dystopia
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Meanings
nouncountable
An imagined society in which people suffer under harsh rules, fear, or lack of freedom, often shown in stories as a warning.
Grammar: Countable: a dystopia, many dystopias. Also used as a genre word: dystopia fiction.
Patterns
- a dystopia of something
- live in a dystopia
The novel pictures a dystopia where every conversation is monitored.
Critics warned that the plan could create a dystopia.
Many teenagers enjoy reading about a dystopia ruled by a single party.
nouncountablefigurative
A real place or situation that is awful to live in, described as if it were a nightmare world.
Grammar: Used figuratively: the city had become a dystopia.
Patterns
- turn into a dystopia
- a dystopia of something
After the floods, the neighborhood felt like a dystopia.
He described the overcrowded factory town as a dystopia.
Reporters called the abandoned district an urban dystopia.
Word forms
| plural | dystopias |
|---|
Common combinations
- dystopian future
- The film imagines a dystopian future ruled by machines.
- dystopian novel
- She wrote a dystopian novel about water shortages.
- urban dystopia
- The game is set in an urban dystopia.
- nightmarish dystopia
- The city becomes a nightmarish dystopia at night.
- utopia or dystopia
- Some say technology leads either to utopia or dystopia.
Synonyms and how they differ
- nightmare
- Nightmare is a general word for any terrible experience, while dystopia suggests a whole society organized badly.
- hell on earth
- Hell on earth is an idiom for extreme suffering and has no connection to a political system.
- police state
- Police state names a real country ruled by force and surveillance, a narrower idea than dystopia.
- anti-utopia
- Anti-utopia is a rare synonym that directly points to the opposite of an ideal world.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: dystopia or distopia? dystopia or utopia?
dystopia vs distopia
This is a frequent misspelling; the correct form has a y after the d.
dystopia vs utopia
Utopia is the perfect imagined society; dystopia is the miserable one.
Practice
The author's novel shows a ___ where citizens are watched at every moment.
Choose one answer.
Dystopia is a frightening imagined society. Utopia is its opposite, and a metropolis or democracy would not necessarily involve constant surveillance.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “dystopia”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.