Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Oligarchy
/ˈɒlɪɡɑːrki/noun
Government controlled by a small group, usually the wealthy.
The Greek roots
ὀλίγος
olígos
few, small
ἄρχειν
árkhein
to rule
Literally: “rule by the few”
The story of the word
Aristotle argued that the decisive feature of an oligarchy is wealth rather than number, so the word never meant simply rule by a handful; it meant rule by the rich. Athens lived under two of them, the Four Hundred in 411 BC and the Thirty who ran the terror of 404. English had the word by the fifteenth century. Ὀλίγος survives in medicine too, in oliguria, passing too little urine.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
Same family
oligopolymonarchyanarchyhierarchy
In a sentence
What began as a shareholder democracy had become an oligarchy of four funds.