Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Political control by a mob.
  • noun The mass of common people as the source of political control.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Government by the mob or populaeo; ochlocracy; governing power exercised or controlled by the disorderly classes. Compare ochlocracy.
  • noun The mob; the populace; the common crowd; the uneducated or lawless class in a community.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A condition in which the lower classes of a nation control public affairs without respect to law, precedents, or vested rights.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Rule or control by the mob (or by the mass of ordinary people); a mob as a politically powerful force.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a political system in which a mob is the source of control; government by the masses

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

mob + -o- +‎ -cracy.

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Examples

  • Keep dreaming and start paying the maximum rate with no deductions because soon enough if you have any form of income you by virtue of the mobocracy will be the rich guy.

    "I already paid the tax. Why do I have to pay it again just 'cause I died?" Ann Althouse 2009

  • It was also believed that an excess of democracy, commonly referred to as mobocracy, was a contributing factor and the Canadian system was thus deliberately made less democratic with institutions such as the appointed Senate and powers of the British appointed Governor-General, who until the 1931 Statute of Westminster was an official of the United Kingdom government.

    fences and neighbours 2006

  • Many of the framers of the Constitution feared what they called "mobocracy," a pejorative euphemism for democracy.

    Alan Dershowitz: Reactionary Activism 2008

  • The nationwide "Day Without Immigrants," in which a million or more invisible people in dozens of cities came out of the shadows to demand basic respect - sheer recognition, my God, as human beings - was anything but the "mobocracy" that Jim Gilchrist, one of the Minutemen founders, proclaimed to the media that it was.

    Crossing the Border 2006

  • An L.A. governed by the everyone-vote-on-everything "mobocracy" would be more dysfunctional than what we have now.

    Greg Nelson plays Rock the Boat 2006

  • Some people speak as if the only alternative of autocracy was democracy, but the alternative maybe "mobocracy," which is ten times worse than democracy.

    War Impressions 1918

  • Let it be confessed that, despite Mr. Meredith's contempt for what he styled the "mobocracy," his first question concerned the meeting.

    Janice Meredith Paul Leicester Ford 1883

  • First and foremost, DerekE, this is not a "mobocracy" like Wikipedia, so it is never appropriate for an editor to change the additions made by an Administrator (exceptions being grammar and spelling corrections, etc.).

    Conservapedia - Recent changes [en] 2010

  • First and foremost, DerekE, this is not a "mobocracy" like Wikipedia, so it is never appropriate for an editor to change the additions made by an Administrator (exceptions being grammar and spelling corrections, etc.).

    Conservapedia - Recent changes [en] 2010

  • First and foremost, DerekE, this is not a "mobocracy" like Wikipedia, so it is never appropriate for an editor to change the additions made by an Administrator (exceptions being grammar and spelling corrections, etc.).

    Conservapedia - Recent changes [en] 2010

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