The next ten days will bring to a head the Brexit drama.
It has strained the UK’s constitution, threatened its social cohesion, terrified its businesses, appalled its friends, and delighted its enemies.
- Peter Kellner
- Carnegie Europe
Each morning, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary email a word of the day to their subscribers.
It is often a little-known word with topical relevance.
On Saturday, March 30—the day when the UK was scheduled to wake up for the first time to life outside the European Union—the word of the day was “kakistocracy.”
It is a nineteenth-century noun, which the OED tells us means “government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a…