Word of the Day:

“You need an internal guidance system for making decisions. Without one, your choices become heavily influenced by external forces such as peers, television, and demagogues.” — Tom Muha, The Capital (Annapolis, Maryland), 2 Oct. 2021

More example sentences

When the ancient Greeks used dēmagōgós (from dêmos, meaning “people,” and -agōgos, “leading”) they meant someone good—a leader who used outstanding oratorical skills to further the interests of the common people. The first known use of demagogue in English comes from the introduction to Thomas Hobbes’s 1629 translation of a text by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides: “It need not be doubted, but from such a master Thucydides was sufficiently qualified, to have become a great demagogue, and of great authority with the people.” Alas, the word quickly took a negative turn; within decades it was being used to refer to someone who uses powers of persuasion to sway and mislead.