![]() The wise and witty debate which continually occupies archy and mehitabel throughout their barbed relationship picks away at the warlike and blinkered behaviour of humankind (well menkind actually) and arouses both fury and resignation in archy. I would add, however, that Marquis reads like an instinctive anarchist and pacifist to me. Grabbed? Well you should be.Īnother US journalist, essayist, and revered children’s author from this time was a friend and admirer, EB White, who said of Marquis’ work: ‘it is bold, disrespectful, full of sad beauty, bawdy adventure, political wisdom, and wild surmise’. In her previous incarnation, as she persistently broadcasts, she was Cleopatra. ![]() His friend and sometimes opponent, mehitabel, is an alley cat with aristocratic as well as bohemian leanings her motto is toujours gai (‘always gay – forever happy’). ![]() Now get this: archy is a cockroach into whose body has transmigrated a free verse poet – or vers libre poet, as archy insists. I wish I’d encountered him years back but here’s a quote and you’ll see why he immediately endeared himself to me: ‘When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: “Whose?”’ĭon Marquis, novelist, poet, newspaper columnist, playwright and (I insist) philosopher, was born in 1878 and in 1916 he began a famous column in New York’s The Evening Sun (later The Sun) which introduced readers to his remarkable creations, archy and mehitabel, who gave rise to his most successful and enduring books. For example, "rule by children" might on the model of gerontocracy be styled paidocracy, or on the strength of matriarchy and patriarchy be named paidarchy.Īlso, Quinion's definitions find very little difference between autarchy ("a system of government by one person with absolute power") and autocracy ("rule by one person with absolute power").Dear readers, I’ve belatedly made the acquaintance of a remarkable US writer who died a month after I was born. The range of types of rule or government comprehended by English words with each ending is extremely broad, and I don't see any pattern in the choice of one or the other that offers a reliable basis for predicting which ending a new form is more likely to adopt. For example, a monarch (Greek monos, alone or single) is a sovereign head of state, in a type of government called monarchy.Īmong the words Quinion lists in a table headed " -cracy Government, rule, or influence," are these:Īristocracy, autocracy, bureaucracy, democracy, gerontocracy, meritocracy, mobocracy, plutocracy, theocracyĪmong the words that Quinion lists in a table headed " -archy Government or rule" are these:Īnarchy, autarchy, hierarchy, matriarchy, monarchy, oligarchy, patriarchy, synarchyīecause many English speakers when presented with the suffix -archy may think first of monarchy and when presented with the suffix -cracy may think first of democracy, they may suppose that a stronger distinction exists between the tendencies of the two suffixes than actually exists. They correspond to nouns in -arch for a person or people who rule or command in that way. Words in -archy are abstract nouns for types of government, leadership, or social influence or organization. Government rule of a particular type a chief or ruler. ![]() Many forms ending in -cracy have been coined, though only a small number are at all well known most can mean either a system of influence or rule or a society o ruled, as with democracy, rule through elected representatives a few can also refer to the rulers as a group, as with aristocracy (Greek aristos, best), rule by members of the highest social class. cracy Also -crat, -cratic, and -cratical. Michael Quinion, Ologies and Isms: Word Beginnings and Endings (Oxford, 2002) has this to say about the suffixes: Today both -archy and -cracy are centrally associated with the idea of ruling. According to Liddell & Scott, An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon (1889), the root word κρατος ( kratos) in ancient Greek meant " strength, might"-and more generally, " power" or " rule, sway, sovereignty." The same lexicon reports that αρχη ( arche) meant "a beginning, origin, first cause," but also " the first place or power, sovereignty, dominion, command." The Greek roots thus have considerable overlap, but the connotations of αρχη may have included a stronger sense of hereditary or historical primacy than those of κρατος. ![]()
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