The Meaning of Idiocracy: What It Is and How To Use It

Do you know the definition of idiocracy? This guide will provide you with all of the knowledge you need on the word idiocracy, including its definition, etymology, synonyms, example sentences, and more!

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What does the word idiocracy mean?

According to Dictionary, Urban Dictionary, and Definitions (America’s Largest Dictionary), the term idiocracy or idiotocracy is a noun and a disparaging term for a society that is made up of idiots, as well as the title of a 2006 satirical film. The 2006 American satirical science fiction comedy film was directed by Mike Judge and stars Luke Wilson, Dax Shepard, Maya Rudolph, and Terry Crews. The film follows two ordinary people from the present who take part in a top-secret military hibernation experiment. They awaken 500 years in the future in a dystopian society full of extremely dumb people. In this society, commercialism, advertising, and cultural anti-intellectualism are running rampant and the uniformly stupid society is devoid of social responsiblity, intellectual curiosity, and coherent notions of human rights and justice. The film achieved a cult following despite its lack of a major theatrical release. During the 2016 presidential election, the film gained popularity because cultural observers compared the candidacy and presidency of Donald Trump to Idiocracy. They saw parallels in his  ejection of facts, principles, and norms, his nativist rhetoric, his vanity and professional disinterest as well as his administration’s lack of preparation. Terry Crews even hinted at reprising his President Camacho role in ads against Trump. Do not confuse this with the word idiosyncrasy. The prefix idio is the same one found in idiot. 

Spoilers ahead, Wilson plays Joe Bauers, an army librarian, who is absolutely average in every regard. The man has no relatives and no future so he is chosen to be one of the two test subjects in a top-secret hibernation program. The other test subject is a hooker Rita, played by Rudolph. The two were set to awaken in one year, but things go wrong and they wake up instead in 2505. The world is barely run by morons, since stupid people have outbred intelligent people since people don’t have to pass an IQ test in order to reproduce, and Joe and Rita are the smartest people in America. Terry Crews portrays US President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. This man is a gun-toting muscleman whose braggadocio and ineptitude make him a poor leader.

The film Idiocracy examines the human race and is considered one of the best comedys of the 2000s as opposed to the worst shows. General idiocracy and a lack of intelligence plague humanity’s inevitable future which rewards people for nothing. This film is satire that gained a following on Facebook and Twitter. Joel Stein wrote reviews on the film’s ads, trailer and device in cool news. The movie Idiocracy was released by the distributor 20th Century Fox and is not for kids to handle. There were not tickets sold even by budget ticket holders since was not released theatrically. The film was still in the spotlight. 

An idiot might have a bad temperament or make asses out of themselves. They might not understand the peculiarity of constitution or the state of constitution of the United States or know many English words even if they are native speakers. They might struggle with revision, understanding tariffs, tablets, the US tariff act, dictionary records, a new item, a quicker clarity spoken by moderators, a lesson, modern use of 18th century or 19th century words, have disaster at their fingertips, take advantage of the mistake they made, and more.  This is a prime example of idiocracy. 

An idiocracy could lead to the root cause of the bankruptcy of an 124-year-old thriving company, grammatical mistakes that led to huge losses or an unresponsive computer program or unresponsive app with no room for error for a single spelling mistake like unfortunate typos, a rogue comma, a lone omitted hyphen, a tiny error, or missing commas leading to a force quit, people not using airplane mode on an ambitious rocket in the promise of space, the lack of current prominence of tech words, terms of ridicule in a newspaper article or a similar concept, a butterfly effect on wireless networks, electronic devices, the Italian airline Alitalia, creditors, the fruit of labour, and pesky pings of the report button on your favourite tech like mobile phones as well as the outcome of people as a trickle of such formations. An idiot might suffer a massive backlash, get beauty sleep, not find a comment offensive, not use useful links, not be handy, misunderstand a mass of coded information, mathematical code, fruitplants and tropical fruit, flood something, misspeak to suppliers, misunderstand new entries to a dictionary, not succeed in public relations as a result of the mix and transfer to a different company, or ouret investment opportunities, a compensation bill, and more. They might do things the hard way, miss important meetings, mess up a series of preset keystrokes in today’s digital lifestyle, get fired in quick succession, 

According to Economic Times, this word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary as new entries like the new addition idiocracy along with words like bedunged — that has been soiled with or covered in dung — which is first recorded from the early 15th century, the Philippine English trapo which describes a politician perceived as belonging to a conventional and corrupt ruling class and comes from the  English phrase ‘traditional politician and has an allusion to the Tagalog word trapo meaning ‘rag’, which in turn is borrowed from the Spanish language.

What is the origin of the term idiocracy?

The term idiocracy was first used in the 1870s to mean personal rule, using the cracy suffix that is used in aristocracy, statocracy, mobocracy, or democracy. This comes from the Ancient Greek kratos meaning rule, a Greek suffix. The term idiocracy was first used as a coinage for a government run by idiots in the 1960s, but was popularized by the 2006 film. A similar term is kikistocracy.  This is related to the earlier terms foolocracy (from 1832) and idiotocracy (which was first used by Ambrose Bierce in 1909.)

Overall, the word idiocracy means a government of a state or country like the United States or British government  in which there is a low intelligence level, no coherent notions of justice, mental retardation, radical conservative vote, no nuance, weakness, lack of knowledge, no hope for humanity’s inevitable future, an anti-intellectual rule of law and resulting behaviors, no social responsibility, misunderstand a quick summary of a larger text or new senses, have no abstract theory, business facing liquidation like the family business Taylor, a bad traditional politician, grammatical mistakes in the US government, a society consisting of a dystopian future, and more. This is also an American science fiction comedy film which was not released at the box office but still has a large audience from DVD release and positive reviews. The pronunciation of idiocracy is id-i-oc-ra-cy. 

Sources:

  1. What does idiocracy mean? | Definitions 
  2. Idiocracy | Urban Dictionary 
  3. Idiocracy synonyms – 163 Words and Phrases for Idiocracy | Power Thesaurus 
  4. Idiocracy Antonyms | Power Thesaurus
  5. Idiocracy | Dictionary 
  6. Oxford adds 1,400 new words to the dictionary, ‘idiocracy’ makes it too! | Economic TimesÂ