Kakistocrat

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A very ill-qualified ruler; a member of a kakistocracy.

    "On the other hand, should the kakistocrats in Iran stick with the name of expediency to describe their power brokers?"

Example

More examples

"On the other hand, should the kakistocrats in Iran stick with the name of expediency to describe their power brokers?"

Etymology

From Ancient Greek κάκιστος (kákistos, “worst”), superlative of κακός (kakós, “bad”) + -κρατία (-kratía, “power, rule, government”) (corresponding to -crat).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.