Did you mean élite?
Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A group or class of persons or a member of such a group or class, enjoying superior intellectual, social, or economic status: "In addition to notions of social equality there was much emphasis on the role of elites and of heroes within them” ( Times Literary Supplement).
- n. The best or most skilled members of a group: the football team's elite.
- n. A size of type on a typewriter, equal to 12 characters per linear inch.
Wiktionary
- adj. Of high birth or social position; aristocratic or patrician.
- adj. Representing the choicest or most select of a group
- n. A special group or social class of people which have a superior intellectual, social or economic status as, the elite of society.
- n. Someone who is among the best at certain task.
Etymologies
- French élite, from Old French eslite, from feminine past participle of eslire, to choose, from Latin ēligere; see elect.
Examples
“There was a time, a dozen years ago, the term elite was carried with them quite a bit.”
“But the term elite has not yet been plasticized into the absurd, and it still retains a certain connotation that can change depending on what we use it to modify.”
“He resumed his criticism of the US media, a line popular with Republican audiences, and what he called the elite in New York and Washington.”
The Guardian: Newt Gingrich ruins Romney's night with decisive victory in South Carolina
“I think the term elite is used in that sense to contrast these cultural elites with, again, business elites who at least had to you know, they had to make money.”
“Just like in Mexico, where the elite is almost all white.”
“Nelson Ramodike, and what he described as his elite group, were of more importance to the ANC than the suffering of ordinary people.”
“Mr Little acknowledged that Eton had a reputation for elitism but insisted that "what we need to do is reclaim the word elite".”
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph
“Look around you, these people kwhitegocubs 4 minutes ago 10:34 PM Somebody decided to comment without reading the commentary , looking at statistics, evaluating our real-world income and wealth inequality , and having any idea what the word "elite" means.”
“Green sought to turn his outsider status into a campaign asset, telling voters that if every Supreme Court justice came from the "same judicial cookie-cutter cloth," the court would resemble the nation's roster of federal judges, which he described as elite and out of touch.”
“It's the short version and what I refer to as the elite's "masterpiece".”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘elite’.
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Keywords, by Raymond Williams
From a book about life and death.
aesthetic, alienation, art, behaviour, bourgeois, bureaucracy, capitalism, career, charity, city, civilization, class and 99 more...
rolig "We could, following her Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's strenuously folksy debate performance, wonder when elite became a bad thing in America. Navy Seals are elite, and they get lots of training so they can swim underwater and invade a foreign country, but if you’re governing the country that dispatches the Seals, it’s not O.K. to be elite? Can likable still trump knowledgeable at such a vulnerable crossroads for the country?"
– Maureen Dowd, "Sarah's Pompom Palaver", New York Times, 4 Oct 2008 Oct 5, 2008