puppet regime
2
8.4
- noun
- /ˈpʌpɪt rɪˈɡeɪm/
- Offensive
:
gobierno títere
- Many citizens protested against the puppet regime, demanding real independence from foreign control.
- install a puppet regime
- Soviet puppet regime
- Nazi puppet regime
Examples
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If he wants them back, he will prevail upon the puppet regime in Moscow to release General Radek.
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It's been a puppet regime all this time anyway.
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Yeah, that's what Fremont and the Russian puppet regime want us to think.
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First, no further financial or military support will be given to puppet regimes and dictatorships in any Islamic nations.
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On August 24, 1989, in Poland, the Soviet puppet regime of General Wojciech Jaruzelski fell.
Academic text (2005) -
Unlike a puppet regime, a Finlandized state calculates that its long-term interests, and perhaps those of its neighbors, are best served by making strategic concessions to a superpower next door.
Academic text (2010) -
After the war, no Yugoslav Communist leader apologized for the acts of the Axis puppet regime, no retribution was visited on Croatia, and no payments were made to aggrieved parties or their relatives.
Academic text (1993) -
And it set up puppet regimes in the so-called homelands it established that had all the elements of bad governance that the National Party criticized: autocracy, patronage, corruption, and enormous budget deficits.
Academic text (1996) -
The new government was widely criticized as a puppet regime set up by external powers.
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Local activists worked tirelessly to expose the corruption of the puppet regime that undermined democracy.
Synonyms
3
5.8
A government run by another country that does what the other country wants and has little real power
1
7.6
A government that looks independent but is controlled by another country
Antonyms
How Controlled
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a government controlled by others' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'puppet' (someone manipulated by others) with 'regime' (a ruling system or government). This metaphorical use of 'puppet' to mean 'controlled' is common cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents should be able to infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Puppet regime comes from the picture of a puppet on strings, moved by a person hidden behind the stage so the puppet has no will of its own. So a puppet regime is a government that is 'controlled by others' and has 'no real independence'.