baron

¹ American  

[bar-uhn] / ˈbær ən /

noun

1. a member of the lowest grade of nobility.

2. (in Britain)

   1. a feudal vassal holding his lands under a direct grant from the king.

   2. a direct descendant of such a vassal or his equal in the nobility.

   3. a member of the House of Lords.

3. an important financier or industrialist, especially one with great power in a particular area.

   an oil baron.

4. a cut of mutton or lamb comprising the two loins, or saddle, and the hind legs.

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Baron ² American  

[ba-rawn] / baˈrɔ̃ /

noun

1. Michel Michel Boyron, 1653–1729, French actor.

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baron British  

/ ˈbærən /

noun

1. a member of a specific rank of nobility, esp the lowest rank in the British Isles

2. (in Europe from the Middle Ages) originally any tenant-in-chief of a king or other overlord, who held land from his superior by honourable service; a land-holding nobleman

3. a powerful businessman or financier

   a press baron

4. English law (formerly) the title held by judges of the Court of Exchequer

5. short for baron of beef

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Etymology

Origin of baron

1200–50; Middle English < Anglo-French, Old French < Late Latin barōn- (stemof barō ) man < Germanic; sense “cut of beef ” perhaps by analogy with the fanciful analysis of sirloin as “Sir Loin”

Example Sentences

Anna Murdoch-Mann, writer and ex-wife of media baron Rupert Murdoch, has died aged 81, his media outlets have announced.

From BBC

The most valuable songbook of the century now belonged to a television baron.

From The Wall Street Journal

The land was donated to the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles in the 1950s by descendants of one of the city’s early oil barons.

From Los Angeles Times

She plunges into the ground, stuck but immediately on a mission: This woman is a spirit charged with guiding the soul of a dying oil baron into the afterlife.

From The Wall Street Journal

Ours is a history in which New York robber barons used the promise of belonging to splinter the poor into factions and manipulate them into fighting among themselves during the Gilded Age.

From Los Angeles Times

Related Words

• aristocrat