To tyrannize people is to use power over them in a cruel and unfair way — to rule them by fear, give them no say, and punish them when they resist. It works with a direct object ('the general tyrannized the whole country') and also with 'over' ('he tyrannized over his younger brothers'), which is a slightly older-sounding pattern but still used. It is a formal, literary word: you meet it in history writing, political argument, and novels far more than in conversation. Like 'tyrannical', it is often stretched down to small domestic scenes — one child tyrannizing the others, a manager tyrannizing a small office — and there the word is doing quiet extra work, saying 'this small power is being used the way dictators use big power'. British writing usually spells it 'tyrannise'; American writing uses 'tyrannize'. Both are correct, and Taiwanese textbooks generally follow the American spelling.

暴虐統治、欺壓、專橫地對待