How to Use fiefdom in a Sentence

fiefdom

noun
Definition of fiefdomnext
Synonyms for fiefdomnext
  • For decades, the NYPD has been the most powerful fiefdom in city government.
    — Eric Umansky, ProPublica, 11 June 2021
  • Set in green rolling hills, the castle comes with a portion of the village, which bears the same name and was once part of its fiefdom, lying at its feet.
    — Silvia Marchetti, CNN, 14 Dec. 2022
  • Neither spacecraft was equipped with the right instruments to study the boundary between our star’s planetary fiefdom and the rest of the universe.
    — Daniel Oberhaus, Wired, 20 Nov. 2020
  • As his mother’s cocaine fiefdom racked in around $2.6 million a day at its height, Blanco soaked up the luxury lifestyle.
    — Kalia Richardson, Rolling Stone, 10 Feb. 2024
  • Instead of a world order, a patchwork of competing fiefdoms.
    — Matthew Gavin Frank, Harper's Magazine, 21 Sep. 2022
  • The days of Belichick running an unfettered, football fiefdom with little oversight need to be over.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 3 Apr. 2023
  • Ottessa Moshfegh’s latest novel takes place in Lapvona, a medieval fiefdom ruled over by a vain and gluttonous lord, Villiam.
    — The Atlantic, 16 May 2022
  • When the warriors of Hamas broke out of their fiefdom in Gaza to kill and kidnap Israelis, a historic failure of imagination came painfully into view.
    — Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh, WSJ, 13 Oct. 2023
  • Today, in the 21st century, with universal adult suffrage, Starmer is right that the Tories cannot treat Britain as their personal fiefdom.
    — Laura Beers, CNN, 24 Oct. 2022
  • But Obama also commands his media fiefdom, with his wife as partner, in a way that no other ex-president has.
    — Chron, 10 Aug. 2021
  • Sepp Blatter, the oily Frenchman who oversaw soccer’s global governing body for nearly two decades and treated it like a private fiefdom, has been banned from the sport since 2015.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 18 Nov. 2022
  • After returning from his mission in the desert, the magistrate has a precipitous fall, and his sometime fiefdom starts to decline along with him.
    — Lidija Haas, The New Republic, 7 Aug. 2020
  • Carrell has never been better, at least outside his Scranton fiefdom.
    — A.a. Dowd, Chron, 4 Apr. 2023
  • RedBird was hashing out an overarching sports and media fiefdom for Iger to oversee.
    — Matt Donnelly, Variety, 21 Nov. 2022
  • The city has long been a Democratic fiefdom, and despite changing demographics—the current mayor is white, for the first time since 2000—the city council is majority black.
    — Andrew Cockburn, Harper’s Magazine , 26 Oct. 2022
  • All of these have been kind of local fiefdoms, and all of a sudden digital money breaks through all of the borders between our countries, and riding on top of the internet which connects all people.
    — Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez, Fortune Crypto, 30 Aug. 2023
  • For 32 years used his position to raise money illegally, uh, and created a fiefdom there.
    — Laura Johnston, cleveland, 22 Mar. 2022
  • In the centuries before British rule, India had been a patchwork of empires and fiefdoms; borders often shifted, and customs blended, in life and in architecture.
    — Daniel Brook, The New Yorker, 7 Sep. 2023
  • In turn, Kadyrov has been entrusted with his own personal fiefdom, and has become one of the Russian president’s most loyal allies.
    — Tristan Bove, Fortune, 15 Mar. 2022
  • These are the rare scenes in which Logan is not the most important person in the room, and Emond plays them in a way that opens up Succession’s world, reminding viewers that there are greater powers and concerns beyond Logan’s fiefdom.
    — Rebecca Alter, Vulture, 2 Nov. 2021
  • The string of championships may also work against Oklahoma, with conference rivals not thrilled with the Sooners having turned the Big 12 into their personal fiefdom.
    — Chuck Carlton, Dallas News, 11 Sep. 2020
  • Every couple of hours she was summoned to the radio room, an antiquated closet in the bowels of the ship that a senior chief, who everyone called Quint, treated as his own personal fiefdom.
    — Elliot Ackerman, Wired, 2 Mar. 2021
  • Hundreds of civilians have been killed or wounded in the crossfire between feuding factions, each eager to expand and consolidate their fiefdoms.
    — Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 21 Apr. 2023
  • The pair first got involved with Formaggio in the mid-1980s, building it into a fromage fiefdom known as much for gourmet provisions and personalized service as rare and specialty cheeses.
    — Kara Baskin, BostonGlobe.com, 5 Jan. 2023
  • So too is competition between streaming platforms that see Korea as their fiefdom.
    — Patrick Frater, Variety, 21 Dec. 2022
  • Folt and Bohn need to put aside the fears of past USC administrators who worried that if the football coach was too dominant and dynamic, the program would become its own fiefdom and the university would lose control.
    — Bill Plaschke, Los Angeles Times, 13 Sep. 2021
  • That way, Mexico might have a proper democracy, instead of a personal or party fiefdom.
    — Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 1 Mar. 2023
  • But in truth every major artist’s output is a fiefdom unto itself, with august gatekeepers and unwritten rules.
    — Sam Knight, The New Yorker, 19 Sep. 2022
  • Given the demographic changes the 14th Ward has experienced over the past few decades, the Burke family’s 70-year domination of its Southwest Side fiefdom borders on the miraculous.
    — Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune, 11 Dec. 2022
  • William DiBella, the powerful Democrat who has run the capital region’s water and sewer authority like a fiefdom for more than two decades is giving up the chairmanship.
    — Edmund H. Mahony, Hartford Courant, 8 Jan. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'fiefdom.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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