big brother

1. 1.

   a totalitarian leader and invader of privacy

   Broaderauthoritarian
2. 2.

   an older brother

   Broaderbrother

Questions about big brother

What does big brother mean?

big brother means "a totalitarian leader and invader of privacy". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

Is big brother a common word?

big brother is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.