Meaning
Cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous in pursuit of power or advantage - the politics that treats principle as costume. It is the standing adjective for manipulative brilliance, and psychologists borrowed it for the trait that measures it. An accusation of brilliance without conscience; scholars note the real Machiavelli was a republican satirist of fortune's wheel - the adjective punishes him for the handbook he wrote in a bad job market. Regional use: General English; Italian origin.
Origin
Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince around 1513; it was printed in 1532, five years after his death, and Europe recoiled on schedule. The book's cold counsels - above all that it is safer to be feared than loved, since love binds by obligation and fear by punishment - earned him Leo Strauss's later tag of teacher of evil and a place on the Index of prohibited books in 1559. France supplied the smear's early engine: Innocent Gentillet's 1576 Anti-Machiavel complained that no courtier of reputation lacked Machiavel at his fingers' ends, and the name became attached to Catherine de Medici and the St Bartholomew's Day massacre. English kept the adjective for statecraft without scruple - Wiktionary's definition is attempting goals by cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous methods, especially in politics - and in 1970 Christie and Geis gave it a second life as a measured personality trait of cold manipulation, making the dark triad's first corner.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a Machiavellian scheme
- Machiavellian tactics
- Machiavellianism
Usage Examples
- The reshuffle was Machiavellian in its economy: one memo, three rivals, no survivors.
- Historians now read his Middle Eastern diplomacy as less Machiavellian than merely exhausted.
- The intern's Machiavellian patience - two years of remembered birthdays - paid out at review time.