Dynasty: Keeping Power in the Family

A dynasty is a succession of rulers drawn from the same family: the Tang, the Habsburgs, the Tudors. Historians use dynasties as units of time — say Ming and a listener in China hears three centuries, not just a surname. Modern English lends the word to business families and to sports teams that win for years on end.

• A line of hereditary rulers. *The Qing dynasty.*
• The period they ruled. *Porcelain from the Ming dynasty.*
• A powerful family in any field. *A political dynasty.*
• A long run of success (sport). *That team was a dynasty.*

Word forms

How it is used in a sentence

• The vase dates from the early Ming dynasty.Dynasties work as dates in Chinese history.
• Dynastic marriages tied half of Europe together.Dynastic describes anything arranged to keep a family in power.
• Three championships in five years made them a dynasty.The sporting sense, mainly American.

Dynasties people name most often

• Han, Tang, Song, Ming, Qing — the great Chinese dynasties
• Tudor and Stuart — the English houses of the 1500s and 1600s
• Habsburg — the Central European family that ruled by marriage as much as by war
• Romanov — Russia's last dynasty, ending in 1917
• Abbasid — the caliphate whose capital was Baghdad

From Greek *dynasteia*, lordship or power, from *dynastes*, a ruler, and ultimately from *dynamis*, power — so *dynasty* and *dynamic* are cousins. English took it in the fifteenth century, at first only for royal houses.