Democratic

How to spell democratic

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce democratic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does democratic mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or supporting a system of government in which citizens hold power, typically through elected representatives, or more broadly favouring equality and shared decision-making.

Democratic in a sentence

• The country held its first democratic election after decades of dictatorship.

• The manager ran the team in a democratic way, letting everyone vote on key decisions.

Where does democratic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek demokratia, which literally meant 'rule by the people', built from demos, meaning 'the common people' or a populated district, and kratos, meaning 'power' or 'strength'. The ancient Athenians coined demokratia in the fifth century BC to name their radical system in which ordinary citizens, rather than kings or nobles, made decisions. The adjective passed into Latin as democraticus and then into French as democratique before arriving in English around the late 1500s. The same demos root sits inside 'demographic' and 'epidemic', while kratos surfaces in 'autocrat' and 'bureaucracy'. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle vowel in demo-CRAT-ic, which sounds like a faint schwa and tempts writers to drop or swap a letter even though the root demos is plainly visible once you know it.

How the word is built

• demo- (from Greek demos: the people)
• crat (from kratos: power, rule)
• -ic (adjective suffix)