kakistocracy

Definition

Government under the control of a nation's worst or least-qualified citizens.

Etymology

From Ancient Greek κάκιστος (kákistos, “worst”), superlative of κακός (kakós, “bad”) + -κρατία (-kratía, “power, rule, government”) (corresponding to -cracy). The word was used, perhaps re-coined, by the English author Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866) in his 1829 novella The Misfortunes of Elphin as the opposite of aristocracy (see second quotation).

Example Sentences

• "Therefore we need not make any scruple of praying against […] those restlesse spirits who can no longer live, then be stickling and medling; who are stung with a perpetuall itch of changing and innovating, transforming our old Hierarchy into a new Presbytery, and this againe into a newer Independency; and our well-temperd Monarchy into a mad kinde of Kakistocracy."
• "The people lived in darkness and vassalage. […] they were utterly destitute of the blessing of those "schools for all," the house of correction, and the treadmill, wherein the autochthonal justice of our agrestic kakistocracy now castigates the heinous sins which were then committed with impunity, […]"
• "Is ours a "government of the people, by the people, for the people," or a Kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?"

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