virtuecratn.
/ˈvəːtʃuːkrat/, /ˈvəːtjuːkrat/, U.S. /ˈvərtʃuˌkræt/ depreciative (chiefly U.S.).
A person who is convinced of his or her moral superiority; (also) a politician or other public figure who seeks to promote morality.
ΚΠ
1985 J. Epstein in N.Y. Times Mag. 24 Nov. 65 The people I have in mind have a superiority complex; they are completely convinced of their own moral superiority. I think of them as ‘virtucrats’, for they are empowered by the unfaltering sense of their own virtue.
1990 G. Will Suddenly iv. viii. 266 His was the voice of the virtucrat, saying: If you disagree with us you are not merely mistaken, you are morally obtuse and not nice.
2001 St. Petersburg (Florida) Times (Nexis) 13 May 1 d Sometimes I wish I could crawl inside the head of the nation's most vocal virtuecrats... That way I could discover their true motivation for building political careers on the need to keep children from viewing anything erotic or sexual.
2012 J. Hitt Bunch of Amateurs ii. 45 For now, the virtucrats dwell mainly on the right of our political spectrum.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, December 2013; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
<
n.1985