misrule
/mɪsˈruːl
/noun [mass noun]
1The unfair or inefficient conduct of the affairs of a country or state: a country that is recovering from decades of misrule...
- What we're dealing with in Iraq is not two and a half weeks of conflict, but two and a half decades of misrule and mismanagement, and there is a major reconstruction project that has to go on there, a major rebuilding of Iraq.
- It continued to expose the regime's trail of criminal misrule, laying bare the hypocrisy of a president and party that had pauperized the country while claiming to be empowering its people.
- Centuries of Portuguese misrule followed by brutal occupation by Indonesia has meant that only 40% of the 800,000 can read or write.
Synonyms
bad government, misgovernment, mismanagement, misdirection, mishandling, maladministration, negligence, incompetence, malpractice
2The disruption of peace; disorder: there was a tradition of misrule before, during, and after games...
- There's a strong thematic connection: Twelfth Night marked the end of the Christian festival, and exploited the mediaeval tradition of misrule.
- Liminal phases of rites of passage, carnivals, and fêtes are often pervaded by images of chaos and misrule.
Synonyms
lawlessness, anarchy, disorder, chaos, confusion, mayhem, turmoil, tumult
verb [with object]
Govern (a country or state) badly: he misruled his country for fourteen years...
- The Scottish Executive is cracking up under the strain of misruling the country.
- Reasonable people could say he misled the country, or misruled the country, and make the argument to support the assertion, but ‘betrayed’ is a word that has a special quality when talking about the President of the United States.
- There were even some who took perverse pleasure in our predicament by telling us that we Kashmiri Pandits deserved what happened to us for having misruled the country all these years.
