patrician

See also: Patrician

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French patricien, from Latin patricius, derived from patrēs cōnscrīptī (“Roman senators”).

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /pəˈtɹɪʃən/
    • Audio (Southern England):(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɪʃən

Noun

patrician (plural patricians)

  1. (Ancient Rome) A member of any of the families constituting the populus Romanus, or body of Roman citizens, before the development of the plebeian order; later, one who, by right of birth or by special privilege conferred, belonged to the senior class of Romans, who, with certain property, had by right a seat in the Roman Senate.
  2. A person of high birth; a nobleman.
  3. One familiar with the works of the Christian Fathers; one versed in patristic lore or life.

Derived terms

Translations

Adjective

patrician (comparative more patrician, superlative most patrician)

  1. Of or pertaining to the Roman patres (“fathers”) or senators, or patricians.
    • 1712 (date written), [Joseph] Addison, Cato, a Tragedy. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson, […], published 1713, →OCLC, Act I, scene i, page 1:
      […] I ſee
      Th’ Inſulting Tyrant prancing o’er the Field
      Strow’d with Rome’s Citizens, and drench’d in Slaughter,
      His Horſe’s Hoofs wet with Patrician Blood.
    • 1945, E[lizabeth] G[idley] Withycombe, “Introduction”, in The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press, →OCLC, page xiv:
      The cognomen was first used in patrician families, who were distinguished from the plebeians by their three names.
  2. Of or pertaining to a person of high birth; noble; not plebeian; aristocratic.
  3. Characteristic of or appropriate to a person of high birth; classy.
    • 2021 February 9, Christina Newland, “Is Tom Hanks part of a dying breed of genuine movie stars?”, in BBC‎[1]:
      Hanks' taste in projects and directors is undoubtedly patrician and with a few exceptions like 1993's Philadelphia, the first mainstream film about the Aids crisis, rarely provocative
  4. Politically active to help people in lower classes, especially in a patronizing or condescending way.
    • 1995, New Statesman Society:
      It will speed the shrivelling of the patrician “one nation” Tories, who tried to curb the extremes of Thatcherism and ended by providing its veils.
    • 2013 July 18, Doctor Martin Parker, Valerie Fournier, Patrick Reedy, The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Organization, Zed Books Ltd., →ISBN:
      Saint-Simon was certainly a radical, and hostile to inherited privilege, but his bourgeois 'socialism' was of a patrician kind. Science, being a firm and certain kind of knowledge, a 'religion of Newton' or 'cult of Reason' essentially plays the key role in his grand scheme for social engineering.
    • 2022 September 8, Michael Bird, This is Tomorrow: Twentieth-century Britain and its Artists, Thames & Hudson, →ISBN:
      Where Ruskin's patrician socialism sought to create better conditions and 'higher' aspirations for the 'Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain', Sickert painted his working- and lower-middle-class subjects as if history, in the advance of mass culture and popular democracy, were on their side.

Further reading

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from French patricien.

Noun

patrician m (plural patricieni)

  1. (historical) patrician

Declension

Declension of patrician
singular plural
indefinite definite indefinite definite
nominative-accusative patrician patricianul patricieni patricienii
genitive-dative patrician patricianului patricieni patricienilor
vocative patricianule patricienilor
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.