aristocracy
noun
a class of persons holding exceptional rank and privileges, especially the hereditary nobility.
aristocracies
-
pluralof aristocracy.plural
The grammatical form denoting more than one person, place, thing, or idea.
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.
From this combination a meritocracy emerged, supplanting aristocracies in lands where feudalism had been weakened by progress.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 10, 2026
This level of self-regard in a writer and thinker as justifiably exalted as Smith may explain why our nation is turning on reading: aristocracies breed resentment among the proles.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 28, 2025
Our ancestors were fleeing autocracies, aristocracies and they were fleeing the unpredictability of the law that comes from an aristocracy or a dictatorship.
From Salon ● May 18, 2024
As Wooldridge says, Enlightenment thinkers, aiming to match “talent to opportunity and knowledge to power,” stressed the difference between natural aristocracies of talents and artificial aristocracies of breeding and inheritance.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 6, 2021
In the Adams formulation, aristocracies were to society as the passions were to the individual personality, permanent fixtures susceptible to disciplined containment and artful channeling, but never altogether removable.
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
