mobocracy
(mɒˈbɒkrəsɪ)
[f. mob n.1, after democracy, ochlocracy: see -cracy.]
1. The rule of the mob, government by a mob.
| 1754 A. Murphy Gray's-Inn Jrnl. No. 95 Another Mode of civil Policy, which cannot be called by a better name than a Mobocracy. 1789 F. Burney Diary 19 Nov., Mr. Wilkes..quarrelled with a gentleman for saying the French government was become a democracy, and asserted it was rather a mobocracy. 1839 Times 18 July, Henceforth,..mobocracy will be ‘at a heavier discount’ than ever. 1878 Bayne Purit. Rev. x. 431 [They] seem to have been infected..with the cretinous hallucinations of mobocracy. |
2. The ‘mob’ or lowest class as a ruling body; a ruling or politically supreme mob.
| 1754 A. Murphy Gray's-Inn Jrnl. No. 95 The Mobocracy have further the legislative and executive Part of their Laws in their own Hands. 1819 Metropolis II. 73 Without the nobles, the mobocracy would have it all their own way. 1856 Chamb. Jrnl. VI. 225 The shopocracy in the pit, and the mobocracy in the gallery. 1885 Century Mag. XXXI. 54 The American demagogue is the courtier of American mobocracy. 1921 G. B. Shaw Back to Methuselah Pref. p. lxii, Bastiat had proved convincingly that Nature had arranged Economic Harmonies which would settle social questions far better than theocracies or aristocracies or mobocracies. 1949 F. L. Wright (title) Genius and the mobocracy. |