See kakistocracy in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"etymology_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "grc",
"3": "κάκιστος",
"4": "",
"5": "worst"
},
"expansion": "Ancient Greek κάκιστος (kákistos, “worst”)",
"name": "der"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "grc",
"2": "κακός",
"3": "-κρατία",
"gloss1": "bad",
"gloss2": "power, rule, government",
"nocat": "1"
},
"expansion": "κακός (kakós, “bad”) + -κρατία (-kratía, “power, rule, government”)",
"name": "affix"
}
],
"etymology_text": "From Ancient Greek κάκιστος (kákistos, “worst”), superlative of κακός (kakós, “bad”) + -κρατία (-kratía, “power, rule, government”). 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 the quotation).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "kakistocracies",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "kakistocracy (plural kakistocracies)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"hyphenation": [
"ka‧kis‧to‧cra‧cy"
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English terms suffixed with -cracy",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Entries with translation boxes",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Afrikaans translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Catalan translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Dutch translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Finnish translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with French translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with German translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Greek translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Italian translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Polish translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Portuguese translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Russian translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Spanish translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Thai translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Forms of government",
"orig": "en:Forms of government",
"parents": [
"Government",
"Politics",
"Society",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Political science",
"orig": "en:Political science",
"parents": [
"Politics",
"Social sciences",
"Society",
"Sciences",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"derived": [
{
"word": "kakistocrat"
},
{
"word": "khakistocracy"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1644, Paul Gosnold, A sermon preached at the publique fast the ninth day of Aug. 1644 at St. Maries, Oxford, Early English Books Online:",
"text": "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.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1829, [Thomas Love Peacock], “The Education of Taliesin”, in The Misfortunes of Elphin, London: Published by Thomas Hookham, Old Bond Street, →OCLC, pages 92–93:",
"text": "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, […]",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1876 January 19, James Russell Lowell, “To Joel Benton”, in Charles Eliot Norton, editor, Letters of James Russell Lowell, volume II, part I, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, publishers, published 1894, →OCLC, page 159:",
"text": "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?",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1999, Gang Deng, “Trinary Structure: Origin, Tension and Equilibrium”, in The Premodern Chinese Economy: Structural Equilibrium and Capitalist Sterility (Routledge Explorations in Economic History), London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 159:",
"text": "Thus, the problem was not whether corruption/power abuse was allowed, but how to keep a balance between uprightness and kakistocracy.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2000, Tom H. Hastings, Ecology of War & Peace: Counting the Cost of Conflict, Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, →ISBN, page 101:",
"text": "Some nation-states have suffered what the Greeks called kakistocracy—government by the worst of men. International law can, in theory if not always in practice, keep these kakistocracies from damaging too much.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2016 November 18, Jamelle Bouie, “Government by the worst men”, in Slate, archived from the original on 2017-01-23:",
"text": "As we step into this world—as we enter the age of kakistocracy—we should remember one thing. This isn’t a departure from [Donald] Trump's populism. It's the foundation of it. This is what Trump campaigned on.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Government under the control of a nation's worst or least-qualified citizens."
],
"id": "en-kakistocracy-en-noun-3G3lBcsd",
"links": [
[
"political science",
"political science"
],
[
"Government",
"government"
],
[
"control",
"control#Noun"
],
[
"nation",
"nation"
],
[
"worst",
"worst"
],
[
"least",
"least"
],
[
"qualified",
"qualified"
],
[
"citizen",
"citizen"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(political science) Government under the control of a nation's worst or least-qualified citizens."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "corruptocracy"
},
{
"word": "cronyism"
},
{
"word": "kleptocracy"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "cacistocracy"
}
],
"topics": [
"political-science",
"social-sciences"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "af",
"lang": "Afrikaans",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"word": "kakistokrasie"
},
{
"code": "ca",
"lang": "Catalan",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "cacistocràcia"
},
{
"code": "nl",
"lang": "Dutch",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "kakistocratie"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"word": "kakistokratia"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "kakistocratie"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "Kakistokratie"
},
{
"code": "el",
"lang": "Greek",
"roman": "kakistokratía",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "κακιστοκρατία"
},
{
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "cachistocrazia"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "kakistokracja"
},
{
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "caquistocracia"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "kakistokrátija",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "какистокра́тия"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "cacocracia"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "caquistocracia"
},
{
"code": "th",
"lang": "Thai",
"roman": "tɔɔ-rá-chá-naa-tí-bpà-dtai",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"word": "ทรชนาธิปไตย"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"The Misfortunes of Elphin",
"Thomas Love Peacock"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/kakɪsˈtɒkɹəsɪ/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/kakɪˈstɒ-/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/kækɪsˈtɑkɹəsi/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/kækɪˈstɑ-/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-kakistocracy.wav",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/88/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-kakistocracy.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-kakistocracy.wav.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/88/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-kakistocracy.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-kakistocracy.wav.ogg"
}
],
"word": "kakistocracy"
}
{
"derived": [
{
"word": "kakistocrat"
},
{
"word": "khakistocracy"
}
],
"etymology_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "grc",
"3": "κάκιστος",
"4": "",
"5": "worst"
},
"expansion": "Ancient Greek κάκιστος (kákistos, “worst”)",
"name": "der"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "grc",
"2": "κακός",
"3": "-κρατία",
"gloss1": "bad",
"gloss2": "power, rule, government",
"nocat": "1"
},
"expansion": "κακός (kakós, “bad”) + -κρατία (-kratía, “power, rule, government”)",
"name": "affix"
}
],
"etymology_text": "From Ancient Greek κάκιστος (kákistos, “worst”), superlative of κακός (kakós, “bad”) + -κρατία (-kratía, “power, rule, government”). 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 the quotation).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "kakistocracies",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "kakistocracy (plural kakistocracies)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"hyphenation": [
"ka‧kis‧to‧cra‧cy"
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"word": "corruptocracy"
},
{
"word": "cronyism"
},
{
"word": "kleptocracy"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English nouns",
"English terms derived from Ancient Greek",
"English terms suffixed with -cracy",
"English terms with quotations",
"Entries with translation boxes",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned",
"Terms with Afrikaans translations",
"Terms with Catalan translations",
"Terms with Dutch translations",
"Terms with Finnish translations",
"Terms with French translations",
"Terms with German translations",
"Terms with Greek translations",
"Terms with Italian translations",
"Terms with Polish translations",
"Terms with Portuguese translations",
"Terms with Russian translations",
"Terms with Spanish translations",
"Terms with Thai translations",
"en:Forms of government",
"en:Political science"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1644, Paul Gosnold, A sermon preached at the publique fast the ninth day of Aug. 1644 at St. Maries, Oxford, Early English Books Online:",
"text": "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.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1829, [Thomas Love Peacock], “The Education of Taliesin”, in The Misfortunes of Elphin, London: Published by Thomas Hookham, Old Bond Street, →OCLC, pages 92–93:",
"text": "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, […]",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1876 January 19, James Russell Lowell, “To Joel Benton”, in Charles Eliot Norton, editor, Letters of James Russell Lowell, volume II, part I, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, publishers, published 1894, →OCLC, page 159:",
"text": "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?",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1999, Gang Deng, “Trinary Structure: Origin, Tension and Equilibrium”, in The Premodern Chinese Economy: Structural Equilibrium and Capitalist Sterility (Routledge Explorations in Economic History), London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 159:",
"text": "Thus, the problem was not whether corruption/power abuse was allowed, but how to keep a balance between uprightness and kakistocracy.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2000, Tom H. Hastings, Ecology of War & Peace: Counting the Cost of Conflict, Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, →ISBN, page 101:",
"text": "Some nation-states have suffered what the Greeks called kakistocracy—government by the worst of men. International law can, in theory if not always in practice, keep these kakistocracies from damaging too much.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2016 November 18, Jamelle Bouie, “Government by the worst men”, in Slate, archived from the original on 2017-01-23:",
"text": "As we step into this world—as we enter the age of kakistocracy—we should remember one thing. This isn’t a departure from [Donald] Trump's populism. It's the foundation of it. This is what Trump campaigned on.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Government under the control of a nation's worst or least-qualified citizens."
],
"links": [
[
"political science",
"political science"
],
[
"Government",
"government"
],
[
"control",
"control#Noun"
],
[
"nation",
"nation"
],
[
"worst",
"worst"
],
[
"least",
"least"
],
[
"qualified",
"qualified"
],
[
"citizen",
"citizen"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(political science) Government under the control of a nation's worst or least-qualified citizens."
],
"topics": [
"political-science",
"social-sciences"
],
"wikipedia": [
"The Misfortunes of Elphin",
"Thomas Love Peacock"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/kakɪsˈtɒkɹəsɪ/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/kakɪˈstɒ-/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/kækɪsˈtɑkɹəsi/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/kækɪˈstɑ-/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-kakistocracy.wav",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/88/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-kakistocracy.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-kakistocracy.wav.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/88/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-kakistocracy.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-kakistocracy.wav.ogg"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "cacistocracy"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "af",
"lang": "Afrikaans",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"word": "kakistokrasie"
},
{
"code": "ca",
"lang": "Catalan",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "cacistocràcia"
},
{
"code": "nl",
"lang": "Dutch",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "kakistocratie"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"word": "kakistokratia"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "kakistocratie"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "Kakistokratie"
},
{
"code": "el",
"lang": "Greek",
"roman": "kakistokratía",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "κακιστοκρατία"
},
{
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "cachistocrazia"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "kakistokracja"
},
{
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "caquistocracia"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "kakistokrátija",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "какистокра́тия"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "cacocracia"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "caquistocracia"
},
{
"code": "th",
"lang": "Thai",
"roman": "tɔɔ-rá-chá-naa-tí-bpà-dtai",
"sense": "government by the worst citizens",
"word": "ทรชนาธิปไตย"
}
],
"word": "kakistocracy"
}
Download raw JSONL data for kakistocracy meaning in English (7.8kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.