royalty

American  

[roi-uhl-tee] / ˈrɔɪ əl ti /

noun

• royalties
  plural

1. royal persons collectively.

2. royal status, dignity, or power; sovereignty.

   to be elevated to royalty.

3. a person of royal lineage; member of a royal family.

4. Archaic. royalties, prerogatives, rights, or symbolic emblems of a king, queen, or other sovereign.

5. a royal domain; kingdom; realm.

6. character or quality proper to or befitting a sovereign; nobility.

7. the most well-known and admired member or members of a particular field or category.

   Her parents are Hollywood royalty. The brand is royalty among champagnes.

8. a compensation or portion of the proceeds paid to the owner of a right, as a patent or oil or mineral right, for the use of it.

9. an agreed portion of the income from a work paid to its author, composer, etc., usually a percentage of the retail price of each copy sold.

10. a royal right, as over minerals, granted by a sovereign to a person or corporation.

11. the payment made for such a right.

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royalty British  

/ ˈrɔɪəltɪ /

noun

1. the rank, power, or position of a king or queen

2. 1. royal persons collectively

   2. one who belongs to the royal family

3. any quality characteristic of a monarch; kingliness or regal dignity

4. a percentage of the revenue from the sale of a book, performance of a theatrical work, use of a patented invention or of land, etc, paid to the author, inventor, or proprietor

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royalty Cultural  

1. A payment made for some right or privilege, as when a publisher pays a royalty to an author for the author's granting the publisher the right to sell the author's book.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• nonroyalty
  noun
• preroyalty
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• royalties
  plural

Etymology

Origin of royalty

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English roialte, from Middle French, Old French roialté, derivative of roial; see origin at royal, -ty ²

Explanation

Royalty is a good word for describing a family of kings, queens, princes, and princesses. If you are in the music business, you may expect a payment, or royalty every time your song is played. How's that for royal treatment? The noun royalty means a group of royals, or kings and their extended families. Queen Elizabeth of England is a member of Britain's royalty, for example. You can also use royalty to describe the payment a writer receives whenever her book is sold, or that a musician gets when his song is played in a grocery store. The word comes from the Latin regalis, "regal," which in turn comes from rex, "king."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

royalty royalties

Marrying into British royalty did not shield Meghan from criticism, speculation and attacks by the press — it appeared to have the opposite effect.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 24, 2026

In 2021, the most recent available public tax filing, the WallBuilders nonprofit paid Barton’s for-profit entities $267,071 in royalty fees for sales of his books.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 23, 2026

Meanwhile, the primary bathroom is fit for royalty thanks to its all-green marble flooring and vanity.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 19, 2026

In each case, the songs are suggested to fans of the real artist - and generate royalty payments for the counterfeiters.

From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026

They reported that the Africans lived like kings, even wearing the fabrics of royalty: velvet, damask, and brocade.

From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver

After Whitney Houston scored a massive hit with “I Will Always Love You” in the early 1990s, she invested some of her royalties from the song in a Black neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee.

From Salon ● Aug. 26, 2026

Without her example, would Taylor Swift have stood up to the hedge funds who bought her back catalogue, re-recording her biggest hits to rob them of royalties?

From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2026

Leopold noted that Arm mostly benefits from rising demand through its business selling royalties and licensing for its chip designs — though its first-ever in-house CPU optimized to support AI workloads could offer an advantage.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 25, 2026

Recently, Spotify added a verification badge to distinguish human artists from AI, and Tidal banned AI-generated music from receiving royalties on its platform.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2026

True, our royalties were small or less than small, but that did not matter.

From "Black Boy" by Richard Wright

Related Words

• fee
• payment
• percentage
• portion
• share