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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. People of gentle birth, good breeding, or high social position.
  2. n. An upper or ruling class.
  3. n. The class of English landowners ranking just below the nobility.
  4. n. People of a particular class or group: another commuter from the suburban gentry.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. Noble birth or lineage; gentility.
  2. n. Family; gens.
  3. n. Gentle breeding or manners; courtesy; civility.
  4. n. A gentle or noble quality or action; a gentlemanly characteristic.
  5. 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.
  6. n. Persons of a particular class: usually applied in ironical civility to persons of an inferior sort.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. Birth; condition; rank by birth.
  2. adj. Courtesy; civility; complaisance.
  3. n. People of education and good breeding.
  4. n. In a restricted sense, those people between the nobility and the yeomanry.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. Birth; condition; rank by birth.
  2. n. People of education and good breeding; in England, in a restricted sense, those between the nobility and the yeomanry.
  3. n. Courtesy; civility; complaisance.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. the most powerful members of a society

Etymologies

  1. Middle English gentri, nobility of birth, from Old French genterie, variant of genterise, gentilise, from gentil, noble; see gentle.

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‘gentry’ has been looked up 1187 times, loved by 1 person, added to 15 lists, and has a Scrabble score of 10.