What Is a ‘Crony’?

You know how words start to sound weird to you? Like you start doubting yourself and start thinking, “Is that even a word?” Well, I’ve been hearing the word “crony” a lot lately, and it started to sound weird to me; so out of curiosity, I looked it up and thought it had an especially interesting origin, so I want to share it with you.

What is the origin of the word ‘crony’?

According to Merriam-Webster, the root of the word “crony” is the Greek word “chronos,” which means “time.” 

The same root gives us the words 

• “chronology” (the order of things in time)
• “chronic” (something that lasts a long time or is with you continuously like a chronic disease)
• "synchronous" (happening at the same time)
• “anachronism” (something that isn’t right for its time, like a cell phone in a movie that’s supposed to be set in the 1950s)

What does ‘crony’ mean?

A crony is someone you’ve been friends with or have known for a long time, and it appears to have been a slang term used by British university students and alumni to describe their old chums. 

Who first used the word ‘crony’?

The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is from the famous 17th century diarist who I’ve mentioned before, Samuel Pepys, who was a student at Cambridge. He referred to another man as “my old Schoolefellow…who was a great crony of mine.”

When did being a ‘crony’ become a bad thing?

Today, “crony” often has a negative connotation, but all the examples in the OED use it in a good way, just to describe old friends. So I wanted to see when having cronies became a bad thing.

The negative meaning emerged in the United States in the early 1940s to describe the Truman administration. 

According to the book “Throw Them All Out” by Peter Schweizer, in 1946 Arthur Krock wrote in the “New York Times” about President Truman’s...

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