Meritocrat

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An advocate of meritocracy.
  2. 2
    A person who has authority allegedly based on ability.

    "The state uses universal testing to identify and elevate meritocrats, leaving most of England’s citizens poor and demoralized, without even a legitimate grievance, since, after all, who could argue that the wise should not rule?"

Example

More examples

"The state uses universal testing to identify and elevate meritocrats, leaving most of England’s citizens poor and demoralized, without even a legitimate grievance, since, after all, who could argue that the wise should not rule?"

Etymology

From merit + -o- + -crat.

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