Word.ws English Dictionary

meritocracy

UK/mɛɹɪˈtɒkɹəsi//mɛɹəˈtɑkɹəsi/

meritocracy noun: rule by merit and talent.

meritocracy: rule by merit and talent
Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

meritocracy (countable and uncountable, plural meritocracies)

  1. Rule by merit and talent.
    • As a small nation without natural resources, Singapore relies on education and meritocracy to develop its economy.
    • In Markovits’s telling, the rise of the meritocracy is a story of unintended consequences.2019 September 5, Sarah Leonard, “The Fall of the Meritocracy”, in The New Republic, archived from the original on 07 Sep 2019
    Antonyms:
    nepotism
  2. A type of society where wealth, income, and social status are assigned through competition.

meritocracy meaning in Tamil, Punjabi, Malay and Indonesian

meritocracy in Tamil

செயல்திறன், தகுதி முறை

meritocracy in Punjabi

rule by merit
ਯੋਗਤਾਰਾਜ yogtārāj, ਯੋਗਤਾਤੰਤਰ yogtātantar

meritocracy in Malay

rule by merit
meritokrasi

meritocracy in Indonesian

rule by merit
meritokrasi
More languagesFewer languages
meritocracy in Persian
شایستهسالاری šâyeste-sâlâri
meritocracy in Thai
คุณธรรมนิยม

Antonyms of meritocracy

Forms of meritocracy

pluralmeritocracies

Origin of meritocracy

From merit + -o- + -cracy, coined by British sociologist Alan Fox in 1956 in an article in Socialist Commentary from May 1956, used as a derisive term, and popularized by British sociologist Michael Young, Baron Young of Dartington in his book The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958).

Words formed from meritocracy

Questions about meritocracy

What does meritocracy mean?
Meritocracy means rule by merit and talent.
What is meritocracy in Tamil?
Meritocracy in Tamil is செயல்திறன், தகுதி முறை. See Meritocracy meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is meritocracy?
Meritocracy is a noun.
How do you pronounce meritocracy?
Meritocracy is pronounced /mɛɹɪˈtɒkɹəsi/ (UK).
What is the plural of meritocracy?
The plural of meritocracy is meritocracies.

Words near meritocracy in the dictionary

  1. meritlessly
  2. meritlessness
  3. meritmonger
  4. meritmongers
  5. meritocracies
  6. meritocracy
  7. meritocrat
  8. meritocratic
  9. meritocratically
  10. meritocratism
  11. meritocrats

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: meritocracy (page history and authors); meritocracy (Tamil Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-AnotherFriendlyHuman-meritocracy.wav.

Cite this entry: “meritocracy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/meritocracy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.