-cracy

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-cracy

(word root) rule, government

Examples of words with the root -cracy: democracy

-cracy

suff.

Government; rule: meritocracy.

[French -cratie, from Old French, from Late Latin -cratia, from Greek -kratiā, from kratos, strength, power; see kar- in Indo-European roots.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

-cracy

n combining form

(Government, Politics & Diplomacy) indicating a type of government or rule: plutocracy; mobocracy. See also -crat

[from Greek -kratia, from kratos power]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

-cracy

a combining form meaning “rule,” “government” by the agent specified by the initial element: democracy; theocracy. Compare -crat.

[< Middle French -cracie (now -cratie) < Late Latin -cratia < Greek -kratia=krát(os) rule, strength, might + -ia -y³]

References in periodicals archive ?

But no democracy, bureaucracy, or any other form of "-cracy" (which is derived from the Greek kratos, meaning "power") is good when tastes concerning nonpublic goods are concerned: Joe's preference for white chocolate and Alice's preference for dark chocolate are nobody's business.

The discontented animal

The "-cracy" part relates to power or strength, while "ethnos" is tribe and "demos" is people.

dream of true democracy

"What is at stake is a fundamental shift from the very unsettling force implied in the '-cracy' of democracy, to an '-archy' (of oligarchy, monarchy) that is some form of legitimated, grounded power."

Waking up from the nightmare of participation, Nina Valerie Kolowratnik and Markus Miessen, eds. (Expodium, 2011)

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