technocrat
noun
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In 1919 W. H. Smyth coined the term technocracy to mean basically "management of society by technical experts". Technocracy grew into a movement during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when politicians and financial institutions were being blamed for the economic disaster, and fans of technocracy claimed that letting technical experts manage the country would be a great improvement. (They also suggested that dollars could be replaced by "energy certificates" representing energy units called ergs.) Today technocrat and technocratic are still popular words for experts with a highly rational and scientific approach to public policy issues. But these experts aren't always the best politicians, and when a terrific technological solution to a problem is opposed by a powerful group or industry, lawmakers find it easier to just ignore it.
Examples of technocrat in a Sentence
Brady Knox, The Washington Examiner, 17 Dec. 2025
Also Justin Theroux joins the cast as Rob House, an unnerving technocrat who is part of the whole puzzle of how the vaults were made and the nuclear apocalypse began.
—Kelly Lawler, USA Today, 16 Dec. 2025
Cheney was a patriot and a technocrat, not a demagogue.
—Max Boot, Foreign Affairs, 5 Nov. 2025
And the remaining steps of the plan—the disarming of Hamas, the fielding of an international security force, and the establishment of a governing committee of Palestinian technocrats—will be a challenge, for the simple reason that no one knows how to do any of them.
—Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, 26 Oct. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Technocrat.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/technocrat. Accessed 28 Dec. 2025.
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