A doozy of an error, or set of errors it turns out, by Merrill Perlman Or is it by the OED and she's just repeating it?

Perlman, CJR's language columnist, had a piece last week talking about the difference, if any, between "autocrat," "dictator," "despot" and "tyrant."

The howler was on "autocrat," which she says began with Catherine the Great.

Actually it's two doozies, though the etymological one caught me first.

Perlman claims the "-crat" back half comes from Russian. No, really.

Catherine the Great was the first to call herself an “autocrat,” in 1762, in her manifestoes that began: “We Catherine II. by the Grace of God, Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias,” the Oxford English Dictionary says. And yes, “auto” is from the Greek for “self, one’s own, by oneself, independently,” though the “crat” comes from Russian.

This classics major laughed in his Greek grammar, knowing that κράτος is the Greek word for "state" or "state power," as in the common everyday English word "democrat."

Then, doing a web search for a piece on its etymology, my second suspicion was also confirmed.

No, Merrill, per this, Catherine wasn't the first to use it. She may have been the first to call HERSELF that, but ... that's nitpicky. The word was around before her in various languages.

Actually, this too isn't nitpicky, but just wrong.

The history minor began wondering as well. And yes, Byzantine emperors used the title (in Greek of course) to translate the Latin "imperator." And, per that link, Catherine wasn't even the first Russian to use it! It was Peter the Great!

I saw the piece last Thursday and Tweeted that I expected a public correctly at CJR, not just a Tweet back. Her actual column only appears about every two weeks. A correction need not wait until then.

On Twitter, I got a response about it the next morning:

Quoting the OED etymology on how it came together, and referring to English usage.

— Merrill Perlman (@meperl) March 6, 2020

Well, then the OED is wrong! (And I'm not paying $90 a year to check on it.)

In addition, I further know it's wrong about "-crat" as a graduate divinity degree holder. Post-Nicaea Eastern Christianity referred to Christ as "Pantocrator," among other things.

We'll see if any correction is in the offing; I have my doubts, given her response, and no response to my response to that. (I told her the OED was wrong.)

A month later, the piece remains uncorrected.