Word.ws English Dictionary

meritocrat

meritocrat noun: an advocate of meritocracy.

Noun

meritocrat (plural meritocrats)

  1. An advocate of meritocracy.
  2. A person who has authority allegedly based on ability.
    • The state uses universal testing to identify and elevate meritocrats, leaving most of England’s citizens poor and demoralized, without even a legitimate grievance, since, after all, who could argue that the wise should not rule?2019 September 5, Sarah Leonard, “The Fall of the Meritocracy”, in The New Republic, archived from the original on 07 Sep 2019
    • In a sharp critique in The New Republic, Sarah Leonard questioned his downplaying of the power of capital over labor, as well as his faith that demoralized meritocrats might make common cause with the beleaguered middle class in exchange for a saner life. […] Amy Chua, author of the best-selling...2019 September 9, Jennifer Schuessler, “The Meritocrat Who Wants to Unwind the Meritocracy”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 10 Sep 2019

Forms of meritocrat

pluralmeritocrats

Origin of meritocrat

From merit + -o- + -crat.

Words formed from meritocrat

Questions about meritocrat

What does meritocrat mean?
Meritocrat means an advocate of meritocracy.
What part of speech is meritocrat?
Meritocrat is a noun.
What is the plural of meritocrat?
The plural of meritocrat is meritocrats.

Words near meritocrat in the dictionary

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

Source and license

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