Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. People of gentle birth, good breeding, or high social position.
- n. An upper or ruling class.
- n. The class of English landowners ranking just below the nobility.
- n. People of a particular class or group: another commuter from the suburban gentry.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Noble birth or lineage; gentility.
- n. Family; gens.
- n. Gentle breeding or manners; courtesy; civility.
- n. A gentle or noble quality or action; a gentlemanly characteristic.
- n. The class of well-born and well-bred people; people of good position; in England, the class of people of means or leisure below the rank of the nobility, sometimes called the upper middle class.
- n. Persons of a particular class: usually applied in ironical civility to persons of an inferior sort.
Wiktionary
- adj. Birth; condition; rank by birth.
- adj. Courtesy; civility; complaisance.
- n. People of education and good breeding.
- n. In a restricted sense, those people between the nobility and the yeomanry.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Birth; condition; rank by birth.
- n. People of education and good breeding; in England, in a restricted sense, those between the nobility and the yeomanry.
- n. Courtesy; civility; complaisance.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the most powerful members of a society
Etymologies
- Middle English gentri, nobility of birth, from Old French genterie, variant of genterise, gentilise, from gentil, noble; see gentle.
Examples
“(pray bear that in mind, gentle reader), gentry by birth, and incontestably so by my father's bearing the commission of good old George the Third, we were _not fine gentry_, but people who could put up with as much as any genteel Scotch family who find it convenient to live on a third floor in London, or on a sixth at Edinburgh or Glasgow.”
“(pray bear that in mind, gentle reader), gentry by birth, and incontestably so by my father's bearing the commission of good old George the Third, we were not _fine gentry_, but people who could put up with as much as any genteel Scotch family who find it convenient to live on a third floor in London, or on a sixth at Edinburgh or Glasgow.”
“These well-to-do, often politically connected professionals—including the increasingly intertwined wealthy of Wall Street, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley—espoused what might be called gentry liberalism, a creed according to which the middle classes had to be punished for their racism, sexism, and excess consumption.”
“The new California landed gentry is indeed a reality.”
“The hard favour'd authority that the workers have presumably seen in the faces of the landed gentry is absent here.”
'[S]hak[ing] the dwellings of the great': Liberation in Joanna Baillies Poems (1790)
“And there were occasional cracks in gentry solidarity — especially when opportunity for preferment presented itself.”
“Polish writers use the word gentry, which doesn't sound quite right in English.”
Poland
“Congress, the relatives of his wife, the titled gentry of Europe were treated with marked and lavish attention.”
“Literature to most of the titled gentry is a blank, my lord -- it is so now and always has been so.”
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators
“But the admiration for monarchical institutions on the English model, for privileged classes, and for a landed aristocracy and gentry, is undisguised and apparently genuine.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gentry’.
-
GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
Comments
No comments yet...
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.