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Big brother

noun

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Unwarranted, invasive, and discreet surveillance, especially of a people by its government.

    "Some people are worried about marketing calls at dinnertime or junk mail or spam, while others are more concerned about Big Brother."

  2. 2
    A sibling's older brother. childish, often

    "If you don't give me back my toys I'll tell my big brother!"

  3. 3
    an older brother wordnet
  4. 4
    Any omnipresent authority or figurehead representing oppressive control.

    "Holonym: the System"

  5. 5
    Something that is bigger in comparison. figuratively

    "While the little MTU Vee-12s in the Class 800 bi-mode generating units have lower overall emissions than their big brothers in the Class 43 IC125 power cars, in the case of CO₂, when you burn a litre of diesel fuel you get 2.8kg of CO₂. [a possible error in the original text]"

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  1. 6
    a totalitarian leader and invader of privacy wordnet
  2. 7
    early mobile phones (in China) figuratively

    "Due to the size of Big Brother and the fact that people who used it were mostly big brothers in the business world, this thing quickly became a status symbol."

  3. 8
    Alternative form of Big Brother. alt-of, alternative

Etymology

After the nominal leader of Oceania in George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

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