noun
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spectacular display or ceremony
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archaic pageants collectively
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of pageantry
Explanation
Pageantry is the grandeur that turns an event into an elaborate spectacle. The long ritual of a new queen's coronation is a good example of pageantry. In contrast to the simplicity of a small wedding ceremony in a friend's back yard, a grand, expensive wedding might include such pageantry as a parade of bridesmaids in rainbow-colored gowns, followed by a mariachi band and the bride arriving on the back of an elephant. Pageantry comes from pageant, which today is a "showy spectacle or parade," but in Middle English meant "stage or scene of a play."
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.
See Examples For:
Yet beneath the emotional tributes and patriotic pageantry, a dangerous sporting test awaits.
From BBC ● Sep. 4, 2026
Mostly they knowingly forfeit the cash to have their 15 minutes in the limelight, sending up the pageantry of British politics.
From Slate ● Aug. 12, 2026
That it was live television and just this pageantry of people congratulating themselves, congratulating each other.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 11, 2026
On television, on one of the three channels then available to us, we watched the pageantry and the pomp.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 1, 2026
Above their heads the trees were full of ravens, their feathers fluffed as they hunched on bare brown branches, staring down at the pageantry below.
From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin
An arrival ceremony on the South Lawn ranks among the most regal of pageantries that Washington has to offer, reserved usually for the most important of visitors and even then for special occasions.
From New York Times ● Sep. 23, 2015
He has conceived scintillating decors for Ziegfeld pageantries.
From Time Magazine Archive
Abstracted from every outward impression, she sat, the image of some ancient sibyl communing with the inward, unseen pageantries of thought—the hidden workings of a power she could not control.
From Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 by John Roby
As life about him, by degrees Discloses all its pageantries He watches with approval shy At two years old.
From Chimneysmoke by Christopher Morley
I pictured the gilded pageantries of the Tiber, the splendours of the pleasure-lost citizens.
From Glories of Spain by Charles W. (William) Wood
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.
