leviathan [LME] In the Bible Leviathan is a sea monster, sometimes identified with a whale, sometimes with a crocodile, sometimes with the Devil. In 1651 Thomas Hobbes published a treatise of political philosophy called Leviathan, in which the monster in question is sovereign power. Modern uses of leviathan for ‘an autocratic monarch or state’ derive from this. Hobbes himself considered that an absolute monarch was essential to maintain an ordered state in a world in which ‘the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. Leviathan has been used for something huge since the early 17th century.