Abstract
Although it often falls short, because the semantic weight of words is constantly evolving, etymology allows us to delve into their roots to understand their origins and their relationship to their original meaning and their current, usually expanded, meaning.
In the case of the term democracy, which in classical Greek could be translated as "power of the people or of the population," the passage of time has led it down paths that are often unpredictable; even the most inhumane tyrannies have spoken of "popular democracy," appropriating a concept and transforming it into something that has nothing to do with the power of the majority, because that power is held by a party clique or, incredibly, by a single person.
