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The word “kakistocracy,” meaning “government by the worst people,” has been cropping up lately, for obvious reasons. But it’s not a new word. So, what was going on in history when someone first felt the need to coin such a term? Was it like our present moment? If so, how did they get out of it? —Kimmy Jimmel
I hadn’t known this until I started researching your question, Kimmy, but that most buttoned-down of British newsmagazines, The Economist, selected “kakistocracy” as its word of the year shortly after the 2024 election. Coincidence? I missed that issue, but something tells me the pick wasn’t made out of disappointment with the coalition government of Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.
The first recorded use of “kakistocracy” comes from a sermon delivered in Oxford by the Rev. Paul Gosnold in 1644, a time when educated people would have understood a new word made from Greek roots. Gosnold railed against those “who have fetched fire from heaven to set their country in combustion, have pretended religion to raise and maintain a most wicked rebellion, and who have set the kingdom aflame to roast their own eggs.”*
So far, all sentiments dear to a dissenter’s heart. But then Gosnold brings it home by admonishing “innovators” who would “transform our old hierarchy into a new presbytery and our well-tempered monarchy into a mad kind of kakistocracy.” Yes, the whole jeremiad is a defense of the (pre-constitutional) English monarchy, which is a somewhat bitter pill for those of us specifically organized behind the principle “no kings.” (If it’s any consolation, the Royalist cause was eventually defeated, though how many years it took and its toll in blood and treasure are too depressing to go into.)
On a lighter note, those with an ear for languages might detect a whiff of familiarity in the Greek root kakistos, the superlative form of the even more redolent kakos. Kakos and kakistos are usually translated as “bad” and “worst,” respectively. However, given the close linguistic relationship between kakos and kakke (“human excrement,” from the same Indo-European root as caca), more pungent renderings spring to mind.
In short, one can make a strong case that a more precise definition of “kakistocracy” is “rule of the shittiest.” And should you find Gosnold’s 1644 coinage too unwieldy, allow me to suggest a pithier alternative that also adds a well-deserved hint of larceny: craptocracy.
*Quotations slightly edited from ye olde original for easier reading.
Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.
