(thug.AWK.ruh.see; th as in thin)
n.
Rule of a country or state by a group of thugs.
Example Citation:
"But can the United States in general, and the war on Osama bin Laden and the Taliban thugocracy in particular, somehow be mass-marketed to a vast and skeptical Muslim populace?"
—Tom Mashberg, "America promises to be a hard sell to many Muslims," The Boston Herald, November 11, 2001
—Tom Mashberg, "America promises to be a hard sell to many Muslims," The Boston Herald, November 11, 2001
Earliest Citation:
The cruise ship is another Pequod, or ship of fools: one of those large symbols with strings attached, by means of which the writer snarls at socialist thugocracy, the class warfare of crooks versus fools, third-world liberation movements, the United Nations and just about everything else.
—Paul Zweig, "Modest Proposals," The New York Times, June 20, 1982
—Paul Zweig, "Modest Proposals," The New York Times, June 20, 1982
Notes:
The right-wing columnist George Will seems to be inordinately fond of today's word. In my research I uncovered no less than five articles in 2001 alone in which Will uses thugocracy. All told, he has inserted this charged word into over a dozen articles since 1988. (I'm prepared to forgive what may be authorial overuse because Will once said the following: "Conservatism begins when the children need orthodontistry.")
As the earliest citation shows, people have been including thugocracy as part of their name-calling duties for quite a while.
Related Words:
adhocracy
corpocracy
do-ocracy
hyper-power
ineptocracy
Iraqnophobia
monster country
R2Per
self-coup
vampire state
xerocracy
corpocracy
do-ocracy
hyper-power
ineptocracy
Iraqnophobia
monster country
R2Per
self-coup
vampire state
xerocracy
Category:
