gerrymander

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   an act of gerrymandering, or dividing a voting area so as to give your own party an unfair advantage

   After they took the majority in the legislature, the party's first priority was to hold on to their power with a blatant gerrymander.

2. 2
   verb

   To draw dividing lines for other types of districts in an unintuitive way to favor a particular group or for other perceived gain.

   The superintendent helped gerrymander the school district lines in order to keep the children of the wealthy gated community in the better school all the way across town.

3. 3
   noun

   A voting district skewed by gerrymandering.

   Any citizen looking at a map of district 12 could immediately tell that it was a gerrymander because of the ridiculous way it cut across four counties while carving up neighborhoods in half.

Simplified etymology

Gerrymander was coined in 1812 by combining the surname of Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry with salamander. A voting district created under Gerry was said to favour his party and was depicted on a published map as a salamander-like creature, labelled the “Gerry-Mander.”

Blend of Gerry + salamander, named after Elbridge Gerry, then governor of Massachusetts. Coined by the editors of the Boston Gazette in an 26 March 1812 article comparing the new electoral district boundary signed into law by Gerry to the shape of the mythological salamander. The original text was likely written by Nathan Hale and Benjamin and John Russell, accompanying a cartoon by Elkanah Tisdale. Despite Gerry's surname beginning with a hard G (/ɡ/), gerrymander is typically pronounced with a soft G (/dʒ/), as a spelling pronunciation.

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External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
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