aristocrat

From French aristocrate (“aristocrat”), attested once in the 16th century but recoined in the Revolutionary era, from aristocratie (“aristocracy”), from Medieval Latin aristocratia, from Ancient Greek ἀριστοκρατία (aristokratía), from ἄριστος (áristos, “best”) (compare Old English ar) + κράτος (krátos, “rule”). By surface analysis, aristo- +‎ -crat.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈæɹɪstəˌkɹæt/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /əˈɹɪstəˌkɹæt/

aristocrat (plural aristocrats)

1. One of the aristocracy, nobility, or people of rank in a community; one of a ruling class; a noble (originally in Revolutionary France).
   • 2023 March 13, Lianne Kolirin, “Skeletal remains of Roman aristocrat discovered in hidden lead coffin”, in CNN‎^[1]:

     The remains of a Roman aristocrat have been unearthed by archaeologists in northern England.

   • 2025 June 27, Michael M. Grynbaum, “The Concorde-and-Caviar Era of Condé Nast, When Magazines Ruled the Earth”, in The New York Times‎^[2], →ISSN, archived from the original on 27 June 2025:

     Magazines kept aristocrats on the payroll to facilitate access to jet-set playgrounds like Corfu and Mustique.

2. A proponent of aristocracy; an advocate of aristocratic government.
   • 1974: Plato (author) and Desmond Lee (translator), The Republic (2nd edition, revised; Penguin Classics; →ISBN, Translator’s Introduction, pages 51 and 53:

     Professor Fite, in The Platonic Legend, deprecates earlier idealization, and finds Plato to be an aristocrat, something of a snob, and the advocate of a restrictively organized society.

     […]

     Plato was, as has so often been observed, temperamentally an aristocrat. And he believed that the qualities needed in his rulers were, in general, hereditary, and that given knowledge and opportunity you could deliberately breed for them.

3. (cryptography) A cipher in which the original punctuation and spacing are retained.

   Coordinate term: patristocrat

• commoner
• plebeian

• See also Thesaurus:nobleman

• aristocracy
• aristocratic

• traciators

Borrowed from French aristocrate.

aristocrat m (plural aristocrați, feminine equivalent aristocrată)

1. aristocrat