(rhymes with aristocracy) A noun, denoting a form of government run by the worst people \u2013 the meanest, the basest, the most cowardly people. A neologism, formed from \u03ba\u03ac\u03ba\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2, meaning \u201cthe worst [in a variety of senses]\u201d and \u03ba\u03c1\u03b1\u03c4\u03ad\u03c9, meaning \u201cto govern, to rule over, to have or gain mastery over.\u201d <\/p>\n
It mirrors \u2018aristocracy,\u2019 which would have originally denoted government by the best people; through the influence of classism, the \u2018best\u2019 people were assumed to be those of the owning class, and thus the word came to have its current meaning. Kakistocracy, being a new word, will presumably undergo a semantic metamorphosis in a different direction. Many people, for instance, might argue that our government is in fact run by the meanest, basest, most cowardly people: politicians. A member of a kakistocracy is, obviously, a kakistocrat.<\/p>\n
Note: this word appears in the Urban Dictionary<\/a> attributed to Bryan H of Simi Valley, CA on Jun 18, 2005; my independent coinage of it dates to around Mar 20, 2000. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (rhymes with aristocracy) A noun, denoting a form of government run by the worst people \u2013 the meanest, the basest, the most cowardly people. A neologism, formed from \u03ba\u03ac\u03ba\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2, meaning \u201cthe worst [in a variety of senses]\u201d and \u03ba\u03c1\u03b1\u03c4\u03ad\u03c9, meaning \u201cto govern, to rule over, to have or gain mastery over.\u201d It mirrors \u2018aristocracy,\u2019 which…<\/p>\n Read More<\/span> Kakistocracy<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":47,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"Layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["entry","author-me","post-78","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnworsley.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnworsley.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnworsley.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnworsley.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnworsley.name\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/johnworsley.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79,"href":"http:\/\/johnworsley.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/78\/revisions\/79"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnworsley.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/47"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnworsley.name\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}