noun
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spectacular display or ceremony
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archaic pageants collectively
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of pageantry
Explanation
Pageantry is the grandeur that turns an event into an elaborate spectacle. The long ritual of a new queen's coronation is a good example of pageantry. In contrast to the simplicity of a small wedding ceremony in a friend's back yard, a grand, expensive wedding might include such pageantry as a parade of bridesmaids in rainbow-colored gowns, followed by a mariachi band and the bride arriving on the back of an elephant. Pageantry comes from pageant, which today is a "showy spectacle or parade," but in Middle English meant "stage or scene of a play."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Some of these lines get at this crucial point that I think your music makes, which is that pageantry and sincerity can coexist.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2026
Xi received the full pageantry of a state visit: a 21-gun salute, a flyover of U.S. jet fighters and a stealth bomber and a gift in the form of a large bald eagle statue.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 3, 2026
The pandas, the pageantry and the warm words may help smooth this relationship.
From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2026
“The elaborate pageantry matters precisely because there is still relatively little substantive progress to showcase,” Singleton said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2026
No, the elevated tone was a part and parcel of the pageantry of establishing a rapport.
From "Travels with Charley in Search of America" by John Steinbeck
An arrival ceremony on the South Lawn ranks among the most regal of pageantries that Washington has to offer, reserved usually for the most important of visitors and even then for special occasions.
From New York Times ● Sep. 23, 2015
He has conceived scintillating decors for Ziegfeld pageantries.
From Time Magazine Archive
But yet her look turned not aside From the black deep where dreams abide, Where worlds and pageantries lay dead Beneath that viewless tide.
From The Common Law by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
I have despised riches; honour and its pageantries could never raise a weak thought in me; beauty alone hath fired my soul.
From Letters of Abelard and Heloise To which is prefix?d a particular account of their lives, amours, and misfortunes by Pierre Bayle
I. From Delphi to Camden—little Hoosier towns,— But here were classic meadows, blooming dales and downs And here were grassy pastures, dewy as the leas Trampled over by the trains of royal pageantries.
From Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) by Bill Nye
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