This week’s theme
A change of character: Act II

This week’s words
ideocracy


Previous week’s theme
A change of character: Act I

Wordsmith Games

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(eye/i-dee-AH-kruh-see)

MEANING:

noun:
1. Government according to the principles of a particular ideology.
2. A state or society governed in this way.

ETYMOLOGY:

From ideo- (idea) + -cracy (rule). Earliest documented use: 1813.

NOTES:

Ideocracy is one letter away from last week’s idiocracy (government by idiots). The pairing even has presidential precedent: John Adams proposed ideocracy on the model of ideology. Curiously, his handwritten coinage appears to read idiocracy while his grandson’s 1851 edition prints ideocracy. The line between rule by ideas and rule by idiots really can be one letter wide.

USAGE:

“[Mikhail] Epstein organized activities in Moscow that might, playfully but seriously, help build alternatives to Soviet ideocracy.”
Peter Monaghan; A Cultural Hero of the Soviet Era Looks to the Future; The Chronicle of Higher Education (Washington, DC); Nov 22, 2002.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: