Acronym of QUasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organization, coined around 1970 for a conference organized by the Carnegie Foundation. Basically, an NGO that gets most of its funding from a government and performs some of the government's functions. This is a strongly regional word -- used primarily in the British Isle and to an extent in Australia, but close to unknown in the United States.
They're proposing we spin off sewer-and-water services into a quango, as if that'll solve everything.
---L.
