thanatocracy

  1. Noun.  Nominal governance by a dead person, through posthumous holding of an official position of authority, or by popular veneration and lasting influence of a personal ideology.
  2. Noun.  The enactment of mass and organized killing as an official policy of a state.
  3. Noun.  The enactment of policies held to lead, directly or indirectly, to death or an increased risk of death.
  4. Noun.  A culture in which rituals relating to the dead play a unique or important role.
  5. Noun.  (figurative) Endemic stagnation or decay.

This is an unmodified, but possibly outdated, definition from Wiktionary and used here under the Creative Commons license. Wiktionary is a great resource. If you like it too, please donate to Wikimedia.

This entry was last updated on RefTopia from its source on 3/20/2012.