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:
"There's something special about college football - the pageantry, the traditions, the fandom. It's dynamic - there's a lot of energy and passion. It truly is an experience."
From BBC ● Sep. 18, 2026
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
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
As I said, the pieces of the pageantry were the same.
From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
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
Thou, bethink thee, art A guest for queens to social pageantries, With gages from a hundred brighter eyes Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part Of chief musician.
From The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Wilkie's painting relates to the present time, and I do not know where Christmas is more cheerfully observed in these days than in London—still there is an alteration—no boar's head—no pageantries, no wassailing.
From The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 10, No. 290, December 29, 1827 by Various
But it is in lyric Andalusia that these pageantries are most at home.
From Spanish Highways and Byways by Katharine Lee Bates
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.
