Machiavellian.
Attempting to achieve goals by cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous methods, especially in politics.
Meaning & usage
Attempting to achieve goals by cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous methods, especially in politics.
Iago is the Machiavellian antagonist in William Shakespeare's play Othello.
Related to the philosophical system of Niccolò Machiavelli.
Where this word comes from
From Machiavelli + -an, from the name of the Italian statesman and writer Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), whose work The Prince (1532) advises that acquiring and exercising power may require unethical methods.
An unscrupulous schemer.
Where this word comes from
From Machiavelli + -an, from the name of the Italian statesman and writer Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), whose work The Prince (1532) advises that acquiring and exercising power may require unethical methods.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.