confederacy

plural confederacies · alternative obsolete confœderacy

1. An alliance.
2. governmentA state where the sovereign constituent units delegate their authority to the centre.

   Synonyms: confederation

3. Specifically, an instance of a decentralized governing structure among the indigenous peoples of North America.

   The Blackfoot, Iroquois, and Sioux peoples all were governed as confederacies. There were also multi-ethnic confederacies, such as the Iron Confederacy made up of the Plains Cree, Assiniboine, Stoney, and Saulteaux.

1. historicalThe collection of American states that seceded from the United States in 1860–61, and fought against the Union in the American Civil War.

   Christmas of 1862 had been a happy one for Atlanta, for the whole South. The Confederacy had scored a smashing victory at Fredericksburg and the Yankee dead and wounded were counted in the thousands.

   1936 June 30, Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, published June 1944, →OCLC, part II, page 252

   Synonyms: Confederate States of America, South