nobiliary
Americanadjective
adjective
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012Etymology
Origin of nobiliary
From the French word nobiliaire, dating back to 1720–30. See noble, -ary
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.
If only a 21st-century title came with a nobiliary particle.
From New York Times
Mixing with the higher classes of society, he wished, like them, to be known by a territorial possession, and framed the name now resounding through the world, prefixing to it the nobiliary particle, De.
From Project Gutenberg
He was degraded, deprived of his nobiliary privileges, and condemned to twenty years' hard labour.
From Project Gutenberg
A frontier line between classes so indefinite could not be maintained, especially as in England there was never a “nobiliary prefix” to stamp a person as a gentleman by his surname, as in France or Germany.4 The process was hastened, moreover, by the corruption of the Heralds’ College and by the ease with which coats of arms could be assumed without a shadow of claim; which tended to bring the “science of armory” into contempt.
From Project Gutenberg
Should the emperor ever adopt such a course, there would follow from it another advantage still more important, namely, that it would gradually extinguish the abuses of the present nobiliary system, and would immediately rid the public departments of all those useless underlings, who now encumber the various offices solely with a view to acquire a footing among the privileged orders.
From Project Gutenberg
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.