"Meritocracy" was a satirical term invented to mock the way that the markers and abilities suggested by "merit" tend to accrue self-reinforcingly to the "meritorious" and those connected to them, creating a stratified society that pretends to justice and legitimacy by appeals to "natural" outcomes of "natural" advantages or "better work ethic", and dismissal of calls for reform with pleas that changes could only result in "less-meritorious", so, necessarily, worse, rule.

The word itself is basically a joke about the circularity and word-game bullshit of "well we assign power according to merit, so anything else is necessarily less-just". If it's not clear, consider: "Goodocracy" or "Bestocracy", or "everyone-gets-what-they-deserve-ocracy". Like... yes, sure, but the details are everything, that's just a vague appeal to stuff approximately everyone wants.

It's entirely hilarious that it's been adopted as a serious term.

In that sense, all types of government are "rule of the best". The differences are just in the metrics used to determine who...

Merit is from Latin, and cracy is a Greek suffix, so combining them together is nonsense. Aristo has the advantage of actually being Greek for "the best."

The word meritocracy was actually popularized (1) by British Labour Party politician Michael Young in his 1958 satirical novel "The Rise of the Meritocracy" which was basically the Idiocracy of its day- in the future idiots will reign supreme sort of thing. But the book was definitely meant to mock the entire idea of society that we live in today. Right down to how the society in the book defined "merit" as basically IQ plus how hard you work, it was a dystopia that came true.

1: Apparently someone else actually coined the term two years earlier in a peer reviewed paper, but Young was where it broke through into general use.