Nepotist

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who gives jobs, promotions or other advantages to family members regardless of their merit
2. Someone who favors their own relatives when handing out positions, privileges or favors in a workplace or institution
3. An individual who shows partiality toward kin, appointing them to posts or benefits they have not earned on merit alone

Etymology: Popes gave the word its sting. In Renaissance Italy, the papacy routinely handed lucrative offices and estates to relatives, and many of those relatives were in fact the pope's own illegitimate children. The practice was publicly described as favoring nephews. Latin "nepos" meant both nephew and grandson, and Italian built "nepotismo" from the related "nepote" to name this papal habit. English borrowed the Italian coinage for the practice itself. The person who practises it is a later English formation, made by adding the suffix "-ist" to the borrowed noun. The result is a name for an employer who hires family, coined from a word about a pope's relatives.