Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Plutocracy
/pluːˈtɒkrəsi/noun
Government by the rich, or the wealthy class that exercises such control.
The Greek roots
πλοῦτος
ploûtos
wealth, riches
κράτος
krátos
power, rule
Literally: “rule by wealth”
The story of the word
Ploutos was the god of wealth, and Aristophanes wrote a comedy in which he appears blind, the explanation for why riches land on the undeserving. The underworld's Plouton is a separate figure whose name the Greeks nonetheless linked to the same wealth, since crops and metals both come up out of the ground. Plutocracy enters English in the 1650s as a complaint rather than a description, and it has stayed one.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → English
- First recorded
- 1650s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
plutocratdemocracyautocracyPluto
In a sentence
Rome under the late republic was closer to a plutocracy than to anything a voter would recognise.