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leadership or predominant influence exercised by one nation over others, as in a confederation.
leadership; predominance.
(especially among smaller nations) aggression or expansionism by large nations in an effort to achieve world domination.
Contemporary Examples

What interested me even more than the headlines was his little riff on the projection of American hegemony.
Obama’s U.N. Speech Michael Tomasky September 23, 2013

Well, the low body mass index (BMI) hegemony appears to be coming to an end.
CDC Researchers Find Lower Mortality Rates Among Overweight People Kent Sepkowitz January 2, 2013

The BRICS Bank looks, for all its founding rhetoric, like a platform for Chinese hegemony instead.
John Kerry Just Visited. But Should We Just Forget About India? Tunku Varadarajan August 2, 2014

After Japan invaded the Korean Peninsula in 1905, the conquerors sought to co-opt local pride to reinforce Japanese hegemony.
Such a Sweet Little Dictator: Kim Jong-un and North Korea’s Child Cult Scott Bixby April 23, 2014

Publishers fear that Amazon will use its hegemony to dictate even lower prices from them in the future.
Is This the Device That Will Revolutionize Reading? Nicholas Ciarelli October 20, 2009

Historical Examples

Brazilian statesmen might well have been pardoned if, in 1865, they had claimed for their country the hegemony of South America.
The South American Republics Part I of II Thomas C. Dawson

Her seniors in point of time, they have been outdistanced in the race for Balkan hegemony.
Bulgaria Frank Fox

The Athenian “hegemony” in its earlier and later phases had an important financial side.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 10, Slice 3 Various

There were papers from other planets now under the hegemony of Mekin.
Talents, Incorporated William Fitzgerald Jenkins

Such episodes must have been common at this period when each city was striving for hegemony.
History Of Egypt, Chalda, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery L.W. King and H.R. Hall

noun (pl) -nies
ascendancy or domination of one power or state within a league, confederation, etc, or of one social class over others
n.

1560s, from Greek hegemonia “leadership, a leading the way, a going first;” also “the authority or sovereignty of one city-state over a number of others,” as Athens in Attica, Thebes in Boeotia; from hegemon “leader,” from hegeisthai “to lead,” perhaps originally “to track down,” from PIE *sag-eyo-, from root *sag- “to seek out, track down, trace” (see seek). Originally of predominance of one city state or another in Greek history; in reference to modern situations from 1860, at first of Prussia in relation to other German states.