The Economist’s word of the year for 2024
“The Greeks knew how to talk about politics and power”
The word of the year that the Economist settled on is kakistocracy: the rule of the worst.
“government by the worst element of a society,” 1829, coined (by Thomas Love Peacock) on analogy of its opposite, aristocracy, from Greek kakistos “worst,” superlative of kakos “bad” + -cracy. Perhaps the closest word in ancient Greek was kakonomia “a bad system of laws and government,” hence kakonomos “with bad laws, ill-governed.” – from www.etymonline.com
This is far from an ancient word, at least in English; indeed, it appears to be an antonym created to counter aristocracy. The earliest known use of kakistocracy was in the 1820s. The OED cites evidence for it from 1829, in the writing of Thomas Love Peacock, satirical novelist and poet.
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