Word.ws English Dictionary

ineptocracy

ineptocracy noun: a government characterized by incompetent leaders.

Noun

ineptocracy (countable and uncountable, plural ineptocracies)

  1. (countable, derogatory) A government characterized by incompetent leaders.
    • "People like to talk about a neoconservative cabal in the White House," he said, referring to the chief architects of the Iraq War, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. "But what you really have is an ineptocracy: these people can't do...2011, Christopher Merrill, The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expeditions, War, Milkweed Editions, →ISBN, page 46
  2. (derogatory, uncountable) The phenomenon of governance or leadership by the incompetent.
    • The road users should at least get some benefit from this waste, another case of Somerset Highways showing ineptocracy.2011 November 17, Richard Fry, “Another case of inept action by highways”, in Wells Journal

Forms of ineptocracy

pluralineptocracies

Origin of ineptocracy

From inept, from French inepte (“feckless”) + -o- + -cracy, from Ancient Greek κράτος (krátos, “strength, power”).

Questions about ineptocracy

What does ineptocracy mean?
Ineptocracy means a government characterized by incompetent leaders.
What part of speech is ineptocracy?
Ineptocracy is a noun.
What is the plural of ineptocracy?
The plural of ineptocracy is ineptocracies.

Words near ineptocracy in the dictionary

  1. ineptitudes
  2. ineptly
  3. ineptness
  4. ineptnesses
  5. ineptocracies
  6. ineptocracy
  7. inequable
  8. inequably
  9. inequal
  10. inequalitarian
  11. inequalitarianism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ineptocracy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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