Definitions popping up everywhere

Maybe it is the blue car phenomena (when you buy a blue car, you see roads filled with blue cars), but, man, am I finding definitions of the State just about everywhere I look, or read, to be more extact. What I have noticed about all of these definitions is that they are usually very brief, not elaborated on, and often stuck somewhere in the first pages of a book or article.

For example, I read In Defence of Anarchism again last night. The previous time, I must have skipped a page or two because there it is, on the first fucking page, "The state is a group of persons who have and exercise supreme authority within a given territory."

On the same page, in a footnote, Wolff also says, "For a similar definition of 'state,' see Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation. Weber emphasizes the means--force--by whcih the will of the state is imposed, but a careful analysis of his definition shows that it also bases itself on the notion of authority."