Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Word to your preznit.

On his blog the other day, Eric Alterman introduced me to the word "kakistocracy":

From Barry R, a word that gets more useful with each day: Kakistocracy (from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000)

SYLLABICATION: kak·is·toc·ra·cy
PRONUNCIATION: kak'i-stok're-se, käki-
NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. kak·is·toc·ra·cies
Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.
ETYMOLOGY:
Greek kakistos, worst, superlative of kakos, bad; see caco- + -cracy.
Oldest use: 1829.

PUTTING THE WORD TO USE:
"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?" - 1876 OED


The only thing I have to add is just a cheap chot-- not a particularly good one, either, but one I find I'm unable to resist: The president certainly puts the ka-ka in kakistocracy.

Rob

4 comments:

Dave said...

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kakistocracy&r=f

A good word. Appropriate in this case.

(how do i make hotlinked URLs here?)

Rob S. said...

I'm not sure how to do it in comments. Andrew?

Anonymous said...

Try putting surrounding the item you wish to hotlink like this:
<a href="http://www.mysite.com/">my site</a>.

For example, check out my web site.

-Christian

Rob S. said...

Thank you, sir. And snazzy site!