Prometheus 6

Word of the day

kakistocracy ? \kak-uh-STAH-kruh-see\ ? (noun)
: government by the worst people

Example sentence:
The free election won't guarantee an end to kakistocracy, because none of the candidates have any more integrity than the corrupt dictator currently in power.

Did you know?
A reader of Time magazine was once so surprised to find this rare and unusual word in the pages of that publication that he decided the occasion warranted a letter to the editor. "Where in the name of Semanticus, did your writer come up with that word 'kakistocracy,'" he wrote in a letter dated February 6, 1956. "Is it a government of parrots?" (A "kaka" is a New Zealand parrot.) Good guess, but "kakistocracy" actually originated as a combination of the Greek "kakistos" (superlative of "kakos," which means "bad") and the English suffix "-cracy," meaning "form of government."

NOTE:
Today's Word of the Day is taken from Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 6/4/2003 09:24:37 AM |