Your link doesn't support that it's a portmanteau of merit and aristocracy. Just that the suffix -cracy ("power", like in demo-cracy) was applied to "merit". I

Your link doesn't support that it's a portmanteau of merit and aristocracy. Just that the suffix -cracy ("power", like in demo-cracy) was applied to "merit". It does say it was coined pejoratively, though. That's interesting, I didn't know that.