Four Hundred
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of Four Hundred
An Americanism dating back to 1885–90; allegedly after the capacity of the ballroom in the mansion of Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, a leader of New York society in the late 19th century
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.
Under Solon’s new laws, each of Athens’s four traditional tribes chose one hundred of its members by lot, including commoners, to sit in the new Council of Four Hundred and run the government.
From Textbooks • Apr. 19, 2023
Mrs. “Jack” is more beautiful than when she last appeared in her box at the Metropolitan Opera-House, an acknowledged belle of the Four Hundred.
From Slate • Oct. 13, 2019
Rich people — and there were supposedly only Four Hundred of them — gathered in Mrs. Astor’s ballroom.
From Washington Post • May 20, 2019
Or at the very least as rigorous an exclusion from glory as that which formerly marked the difference between Mrs. Astor’s Four Hundred and the rest of the human race.
From The New Yorker • Dec. 4, 2014
The more cultivated social class—the "Four Hundred," as the saying is—have an immense value in certain directions.
From The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV by Harper, Ida Husted
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
