mediocrat

plural mediocrats

1. A politician or bureaucrat of mediocre ability.

   In India, men and women of talent, ability, honesty and integrity keep their distance from the politics of today. It is a game of mediocrats.

   1995, Rishi Ranjan Chakrabarty, While India is burning, page 38

   2 more examples

   The Oligarchs — remnants from Brazil's colonial past — are sub-divided into the well-intentioned but provincial "mediocrats" and the more highly powered "kleptocrats" — thieves of the first order.

   1993, Brazil Watch - Volume 10, page 21

   It was argued by Jayashree (1999) and by Sadri and Jayashree (2002) that the greatest hindrance to organisational progress is the mediocrat - the bureaucrat who tries to guard his turf since he is inherently insecure.

   2008, R. P. Mohanty, Quality Management Practices, page 175

2. An advocate of mediocracy; one who prefers to avoid controversy, change and risk.

   Perhaps this Utopia of the mediocrats is not so far off; perhaps it is time for the meritocracy to assert itself.

   1977, Hans Jürgen Eysenck, Psychology is about people, page 199

   3 more examples

   There is in Canadian political, business, and social life a certain formality and conservatism that reflect this fact. This conservatism has its regrettable side, of course. The walking dead are out in numbers - the mediocrats, the anti-hothead vote.

   1971, John W. Berry, Gerald J. S. Wilde, Social Psychology of Canada: An Annotated Bibliography, page 9

   And our mediocrats are satisfied. Mediocrity is not, of course, a specifically modern sin; what is specifically modern is its overwhelming acceptance as the normal condition of humanity.

   1978, Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington, After Reason, page 153

   First of all, we have to scrap the mediocrats' approach. We have to reward excellence without going to a superstar mentality, and we have to take care that at all times all the possibilities are covered.

   1997, Dick Higgins, Modernism Since Postmodernism: Essays on Intermedia, page 62

3. An ordinary person with no special abilities; a mediocrity.

   Follow the big top, even if you're only one of the crowd, only a mediocrat, as Vesta says.

   1928, Nalbro Bartley, The Mediocrat, page 172

   2 more examples

   Not only is marriage a prerequisite for these groups, but in all other respects the joiners sound like archetypical mediocrats. Their average income is about $10,000 a year; the most heavily represented occupational categories are “salesman” and "housewife," and the average age is thirty to fifty.

   1971, Elaine Kendall, The Happy Mediocrity, page 196

   The world evolution is out of mediocrats. You cannot expect all to be Nobel Prize winners or scientists of the rank of Newton.

   1995, Ratnakar Gedam, Poverty in India: Myth and Reality, page 489

4. A politician or leader from a middle-class background.

   Increasingly, it is through these media-anointed mediocrats — Reverend Al Sharpton for New York's black dispossessed microculture, to cite one example — that microcultures talk to one another.

   1997, Watts Wacker, The 500-year Delta: What Happens After what Comes Next, page 30

   1 more example

   A Council like this, constituted as it will be exclusively of the ruling chiefs and territorial magnates, will be a mere ornamental body, hardly competent to give sound advice to Government in all important matters. In India it is the mediocrat who have received the light of education, and it is they whou can render good advice for the solution of the important political problems that may arise in the administration of this country.

   1908, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers: 1850-1908 - Volume 76, Part 2, page 124

5. biologyA plant species that thrives in moderate conditions.

   The sharp increase in terminocrats and the decrease in mediocrats between marker beds f and h should correspond to renewed cooling.

   2004, John A. Van Couvering, The Pleistocene Boundary and the Beginning of the Quaternary

   2 more examples

   In our opinion it is impossible to consider Taxodiaceae as a characteristic index of a warm climate and therefore they cannot be included in the typical mediocrats group,

   1979, Pollen Et Spores, page 159

   The mediocrats (see “mesocratic” in Figure 15.8) curve refers to Quercus, Tilia, Ulmus, and other trees/shrubs characteristic of the climatic-optimum part of interglacials.

   2007, Alfred Traverse, Paleopalynology, page 444