cacotopia

[Mark A. Mandel]

Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM> said:
     >>>>>

Jeremy Bentham used the word "cacotopia" in 1818, defining it as "the 
imagined seat of
the worst government."  OED labels it "nonce-wd."

  <<<<<

That makes good sense as the opposite of "eutopia", which at least in 
present-day English is homophonous with "utopia". I always thought More 
coined the word straightforwardly as 'no-place', which would make this nonce 
word a derivation based on an eggcorn. Wikipedia 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia#Etymology) says, though,

 	The word "utopia" was created to suggest two Greek neologisms 
simultaneously: outopia (no place) and eutopia (good place).

and OED supports that:

 	Eutopia: [...] First used by Sir T. More or his friend Peter Giles 
(see quot. 1516), with a play on UTOPIA ( [...] = ‘no place, land of 
nowhere’), the name of the imaginary country described in More's famous book 
with that title. Some later writers have misused the word for Utopia, 
imagining the latter to be an incorrect spelling; others have correctly used 
the two words in an antithesis.

The 1516 quotation is from a text "prefixed to 'Utopia'", I suppose as a 
preface.

-- Mark A. Mandel
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]