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The word that broke the dictionary


John O. Brennan ‏Verified account @JohnBrennan
John O. Brennan Retweeted Donald J. Trump

Your kakistocracy is collapsing after its lamentable journey. As the greatest Nation history has known, we have the opportunity to emerge from this nightmare stronger & more committed to ensuring a better life for all Americans, including those you have so tragically deceived.

Kakistocracy, a 374-year-old word that means ‘government by the worst,’ just broke the dictionary

by Avi Selk April 13
 
Kleptocracy means a government by thieves, and autocracy means government by one person. Both of those terms have been used liberally by Trump’s critics in the last year or so, but kakistocracy … was that like a government of cack, as in dung?

Actually, yeah, kind of.

Searches for the kakistocracy surged to the top of Merriam-Webster, arguably the hippest of the major dictionaries.

So Merriam-Webster wrote a short explainer. Kakistos is Greek for “worst,” so kakistocracy means government by the worst people.

The plural is kakistocracies, the dictionary added, in case the world one day ends up with two of them.

Merriam-Webster traced the word’s first known use to a 159-word sentence in a sermon by a supporter of King Charles I during the English Civil War in 1644.

It’s too amazing to excerpt, so buckle in:

“We need not make any scruple of praying against such,” the speaker Paul Gosnold said of the king’s enemies, “against those Sanctimonious Incendiaries, who have fetched fire from heaven to set their Country in combustion, have pretended Religion to raise and maintain a most wicked rebellion, against those Neros, who have ripped up the womb of the mother that bare them, and wounded the breasts that gave them suck, against those cannibals who feed upon the flesh and are drunk with the blood of their own brethren, against those Catilines who seek their private ends in the public disturbance, and have set the kingdom on fire to roast their own eggs, against those tempests of the State, those restless spirits who can no longer live, then be stickling and meddling, who are stung with a perpetual itch of changing and innovating, transforming our old hierarchy into a new Presbytery, and this again into a newer Independency; and our well-tempered Monarchy into a mad kind of Kakistocracy.

“Good Lord!” he continued. “What wild irregular courses have these men run, since the reins have lain loose upon them? I am afraid, they will never leave chopping and changing, plotting and practicing, till in conclusion they bring all to confusion, all to an Anarchy or savage Ataxie, Prayer, Peace, Jerusalem, and all.”

Gosnold’s side eventually lost the war. Anyway, Brennan wasn’t the first person to use the word after him. It appeared in the epigraph of a 1992 book about Dan Quayle, and then the name of a Tennessee punk band.

Paul Krugman rolled the word out in the New York Times near the beginning of Trump’s presidency: “An American kakistocracy — rule by the worst.”

The dictionary had to explain the word last summer, too, after MSNBC host Joy Reid used it, once again, to drag Trump.

This time, however, kakistocracy blew up the charts, with dictionary searches spiking nearly 14,000 percent after Brennan’s tweet.

https://tinyurl.com/y9m8b2pm
4/14/2018, 11:06 am Link to this post PM Bellelettres
 
crogin Profile
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Registered: 01-2009
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Re: The word that broke the dictionary


If it hadn't existed before we'd have had to create it!

---
Don't try to tell me the only way left is up.
There's always more down!

4/14/2018, 3:55 pm Link to this post PM crogin
 
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Re: The word that broke the dictionary


Would a Khakistocracy be a government of people who all wear khaki pants?
4/14/2018, 4:00 pm Link to this post PM gopqed Blog
 
Bellelettres Profile
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Re: The word that broke the dictionary


But of course!
4/14/2018, 4:26 pm Link to this post PM Bellelettres
 
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Re: The word that broke the dictionary


Actually I think Kakistocracy really means a government by people who are full of ka-ka! emoticon

---
Don't try to tell me the only way left is up.
There's always more down!

4/14/2018, 4:45 pm Link to this post PM crogin
 


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