{"id":43292,"date":"2018-10-09T14:08:38","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T13:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=43292"},"modified":"2018-10-09T14:08:38","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T13:08:38","slug":"idiocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2018\/10\/09\/idiocracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Idiocracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Oxford English Dictionary has accepted idiocracy as an English word this month, <a href=\"https:\/\/public.oed.com\/blog\/new-words-notes-september-2018\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">noting<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The\u00a0<em>OED<\/em>\u00a0records more than 100 words derived ultimately from the Greek suffix \u2014\u00ce\u00ba\u00cf\u0081\u00ce\u00b1\u00cf\u201e\u00ce\u00af\u00ce\u00b1 (rendered in English as\u00a0<em>\u2014cracy<\/em>), meaning \u2018power\u2019 or \u2018rule\u2019. One more has now been added to the list:\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/69085108\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">idiocracy<\/a><\/em>, referring to a society consisting of or governed by people characterized as idiots, or a government formed of people considered stupid, ignorant, or idiotic. Words like\u00a0<em>democracy<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>aristocracy<\/em>originated in ancient Greek, but by the 18th century,\u00a0<em>-ocracy<\/em>\u00a0was being added to English words, as in\u00a0<em>statocracy\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>mobocracy<\/em>. In the 19th century, the trickle of such formations became a flood, with many of the new words being terms of ridicule, a tradition to which\u00a0<em>idiocracy<\/em>\u00a0belongs; the earlier terms\u00a0<em>foolocracy<\/em>\u00a0(1832) and\u00a0<em>idiotocracy<\/em>\u00a0(used by Ambrose Bierce in 1909) express a similar concept.\u00a0<em>Idiocracy<\/em>\u00a0itself is first attested in 1967, but it owes its current prominence to the title of the satirical 2006 film\u00a0<em>Idiocracy<\/em>, which depicts a dystopian future in which the human race has become extremely ignorant, stupid, and anti-intellectual.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I am not sure there is a great deal to add by way of comment on this timely decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Oxford English Dictionary has accepted idiocracy as an English word this month, noting: The\u00a0OED\u00a0records more than 100 words derived ultimately from the Greek suffix<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2018\/10\/09\/idiocracy\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}