meritocracy
/mɛɹəˈtɑkɹəsi/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.55 in modern English
20
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
5
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A type of society where wealth, income, and social status are assigned through competition.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "As a small nation without natural resources, Singapore relies on education and meritocracy to develop its economy."
- "In Markovits’s telling, the rise of the meritocracy is a story of unintended consequences."
- "Its faculty has also been a factory of books taking differing positions on the merits and demerits of meritocracy and elite education."
- "In April, six months after Amazon began a wave of layoffs that ultimately wiped out 30,000 jobs, a former employee went on the social media site Blind to rant about the end of meritocracy: “What’s the point of getting a good performance review if you can still be laid off anyway?”"
Etymology
Etymology tree English merit Ancient Greek -ο- (-o-)der. Latin -o-bor. English -o- Proto-Indo-European *kret-der. Ancient Greek κρᾰ́τος (krắtos) Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-i-eh₂ Proto-Hellenic *-íā Ancient Greek -ῐ́ᾱ (-ĭ́ā) Ancient Greek -κρᾰτῐ́ᾱ (-krătĭ́ā)bor. English -cracy English meritocracy From merit + -o- + -cracy, coined by British sociologist Alan Fox in 1956 in an article in Socialist Commentary from May 1956, used as a derisive term, and popularized by British sociologist Michael Young, Baron Young of Dartington in his book The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958).
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /mɛɹəˈtɑkɹəsi/
- British English: /mɛɹɪˈtɒkɹəsi/