gerontocracy

Definitions

Government by elders; government by elderly rulers.

countable, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“Near-synonym: senilocracy”

“It would come⟳ as no surprise⟳ to find⟳ that optimum science policy is apt to be developed neither by gerontocracy nor by juvenocracy but, like⟳ the community of scientists itself, by age-diversified meritocracy.”

“But in his 1996 novel, Holy Fire, [Bruce] Sterling imagines a rather different future: a world ruled by an all-powerful gerontocracy, which appropriates most of the world's wealth to pay⟳ for ever more costly life-extension techniques.”

“Young people who are close⟳ to writing off the Democratic Party as a dinosaur, as a gerontocracy of prudish abuelos who gave birth by immaculate conception, may be in for a pleasant surprise⟳.”

“He [Koizumi] was what would pass⟳ for a political maverick among Japan's faceless gray gerontocracy.”

CEFR level