Monday, June 04, 2007


Brilliant.

Something happened during the recent National Spelling Bee. A word that's lingered in obscurity for a century - a word we all really need today- wiggled back into the public discourse, thanks to Isabel Jacobson, a 14 year old spelling champion from Madison, Wisconsin. She mentioned that her favorite difficult word was kakistocracy.

Someone noticed, sent an email that made the rounds, and a friend of mine had an idea. We all agreed: this needs to be a bumper sticker!


Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) -
kak·is·toc·ra·cy /ˌkækəˈstɒkrəsi/ Pronunciation Key - [kak-uh-stok-ruh-see] –noun, plural -cies. government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power.

Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.

"government by the worst element of a society," coined on analogy of aristocracy from Gk. kakistos "worst," superl. of kakos "bad" (which is perhaps related to the general IE word for "defecate")

You can order them here.

2 Comments:

At 9:31 AM, Blogger Paddy said...

Caca is right.

 
At 10:31 AM, Blogger Mary Ellen said...

Love it!

 

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