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• aristo
  aristo

  noun

  aristocrat.
• aristo-
  aristo-

  a learned borrowing from Greek meaning “best,” occurring either in direct loans (aristocratic ), or in the formation of compound words.

aristo

¹ American  

[uh-ris-toh] / əˈrɪs toʊ /

noun

Chiefly British Informal.

aristos plural

1. aristocrat.

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aristo- ² American  

1. a learned borrowing from Greek meaning “best,” occurring either in direct loans (aristocratic ), or in the formation of compound words.

   aristotype.

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aristo British  

/ əˈrɪstəʊ, ˈærɪstəʊ /

noun

1. informal short for aristocrat

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• aristos
  plural

Etymology

Origin of aristo¹

1860–65; by shortening; cf. -o

Origin of aristo-²

< Greek, combining form of áristos best, superlative of ari- probably a term specifying at first the upper class of society, the warrior caste; cf. Ares, perhaps Aryan

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

aristo aristos

Raised in a San Francisco orphanage, educated at Princeton, he has fathered two sets of twins with his Scottish aristo wife, who is herself “eighteenth cousin to the Queen twice removed or something.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 8, 2020

They train her in aristo ways in a wan “My Fair Lady”-style tutoring session.

From New York Times ● Apr. 24, 2017

Instead of trying to look merely healthy—just naturally lustrous—women now strive to look as much as possible like a bewigged aristo of yore.

From Slate ● May 14, 2012

Gimmick: Probably the whole swashbuckling British aristo thing.

From The Guardian ● Jul. 26, 2011

Every afternoon before the gates closed and the market carts went out in procession by the various barricades, some fool of an aristo endeavoured to evade the clutches of the Committee of Public Safety.

From The Scarlet Pimpernel by Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness

Diane Lane, John Glover and Tavi Gevinson play the faltering aristos with Harold Perrineau as an upstart entrepreneur and Joel Grey as a loyal servant.

From The Guardian ● Sep. 8, 2016

Meanwhile, in other surprising developments, tenant farmers prove very nearly interchangeable; aristos turn out to be rather bad at child-minding; and an underbutler shows that he is, in his down time, a superbowler.

From New York Times ● Jan. 10, 2016

Other options include St. Andrews, the alma mater of both William and Kate, where the royal offspring could follow in the footsteps of many other English aristos by studying the History of Art.

From Time ● Dec. 5, 2012

Velvet sleeves concealing jewel-encrusted daggers, scheming eunuchs with networks of spies, parvenue commoners outwitting the supercilious aristos and totally, utterly ruthless power plays — what’s not to love?

From Salon ● Jun. 4, 2012

Throughout the world, machines did the work of man, and the aristos, owners of the machines, played in soft idleness in their crystal and gold pleasure cities.

From Astounding Stories, July, 1931 by Various