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Gentry   /dʒˈɛntri/   Listen
Gentry

noun
1.
The most powerful members of a society.  Synonym: aristocracy.



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"Gentry" Quotes from Famous Books



... the fall-line of the rivers, where the small farmer practiced a diversified agriculture. Socially and politically the two regions had always been distinct. The gentlemen planters of the tidewater, with much the same outlook as the English gentry of the same period, regarded the democratic yeomen of the Piedmont with distrust not unmixed with contempt. By excluding them from their proportionate representation in the state legislatures, the aristocratic planters maintained ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... subjects, have happend and been occasioned by Footmen wearing of Swords, for the prevention of the like evill accidents and disturbance for the future, I doe hereby order that no Foot-man attending any of the Nobilitye or Gentry of his Ma'ties Realms, during such time as they or any of them shall reside or bee within the Cities of London or Westm'r, and the Liberties and Precincts of the same, shall wear any Sword, Hanger, Bagonet, or other such like offensive weapon, as they will ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various

... made the attempt. It is a fearful time to have the government in his hands; but for that very reason I am glad that he and no other has it. The accounts from Ireland are worse and worse, and what with the extreme misery of the unfortunate poor and the misbehaviour of the gentry, he is made very miserable. As he said this morning, at times they almost drive ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... all gone to sleep without being disturbed by the hyenas. This was easily accounted for. The three horses that had been shot that day occupied the attention of these gentry, for their hideous voices could be heard off in the direction where the carcasses lay. Having enough to give them a supper, they found no occasion to risk themselves in the neighbourhood of the camp, where they had experienced such a hostile reception on the previous ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... trifled; The level lawn, the trickling brook, The trees I climb'd, the beds I rifled: The church is larger than before; You reach it by a carriage entry; It holds three hundred people more, And pews are fitted up for gentry. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various

... poems, which he succeeded in publishing at this time, gave him a name and some money, and he returned to Mossgiel, and getting her father to consent, married Jane, and moved on to a farm six miles from Dumfries. He had become a lion, and the tables of the neighboring gentry were soon open to him, as the houses of the great had been in Edinburgh. Those were the days of conviviality, and Burns took his part in the hilarity of the table, soon with very direful consequences to himself and his family. He made many resolutions of amendment; but temperance was a very ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... make a covenant with myself, that affection may not press upon judgment: for I suppose there is no man, that hath any apprehension of gentry or nobleness, but his affection stands to a continuance of a noble name and house, and would take hold of a twig or twine-thread to uphold it: and yet time hath his revolution, there must be a period and an end of all ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... the superficiality of his own knowledge of the art; and during the first half of the nineteenth century, Gothic design was applied not to churches, but to the more ambitious classes of domestic architecture. The country houses of the nobility and landed gentry were largely built or rebuilt in what was known as the castellated style.[21] Meanwhile a truer understanding of the principles of pointed architecture was being helped by the publication of archaeological works like Britton's "Cathedral Antiquities" (1814-35), Milner's "Treatise on Ecclesiastical ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... even beseech his "hands" to wait a day or two longer for their wages. He liked to feel that he had all that money in his possession. Yet "at home," in Poland, he had always lent money to the officers and gentry, when they ran temporarily short at cards. They would knock him up in the middle of the night to obtain the means of going on with the game. And in England he never refused to become surety for a loan when any of his poor friends begged the favor of him. These ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... unmannerly, it is fair to record that the last witness, whilst swearing that he was a chauffeur, had resembled one of the landed gentry of the Edwardian Age, and that the last but one—to wit, the chauffeur's employer—had sworn that he was a retired grocer, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... poor widow did to the unjust judge, to try what she could do with them for my liberty, before they went forth of the town. The place where she went to them was to the Swan Chamber, where the two judges, and many justices and gentry of the country, were in company together. She then, coming into the chamber with abashed face, and a trembling heart, began her errand to them ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Birmingham Hunt; but, as the sound of the dogs and the anvil never harmonised together, they have been long in disuse: the jocund tribe, therefore, having no scent of their own, fall into that of the neighbouring gentry, many of ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... southward and corroborates the odious dog-vane that you fondly imagined might have got stuck in its northerly direction. You walk out and ask every labourer you meet whether he "does not think we are going to have a change?" The man looks up from his work, wonders at your solicitude, opines "the gentry folk have queer ways," but answers honestly enough, according to his convictions, in the negative—perhaps giving some local reasons for his opinion, which, if an old man, he will tell you he has never known to fail. Lastly, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... Ballycloran was never done by personal visits. If money was received, Thady used to call and pay it at Keegan's office; if other steps were to be taken, he employed one of those messengers, so frequently unwelcome at the houses of the Connaught gentry, and this usually ended in Thady calling at Mr. Keegan's for a fresh bill for his father to sign. Old Macdermot was therefore so surprised that he knew not how to address his visitor. This, together with his hatred of the man, and his ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... the gorgeous residences, notably in Georgia and South Carolina, built by the nobility and gentry of the republic, and inherited by the descendants of the old colonial aristocracy. What wonder, that they held themselves aloof from the manual laborer, black or white, and that they were uncontaminated by the attrition ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... all times a very easy task for any one coming from higher spheres. The prince's frequent visits to the Ozhogins (he used to spend his evenings there) of course aroused the jealousy of the other worthy gentry and officials of the town. But the prince, like a clever person and a man of the world, never neglected a single one of them; he called on all of them; to every married lady and every unmarried miss he addressed at least one flattering phrase, allowed them to feed him on elaborately ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... blemishes, but they were magnified into radical and incurable defects (1835). The complaints of the gentry, induced Governor Bourke to take the opinion of the judges and the law officers of the crown: on the whole, they were fully satisfied with the result of the law. It was remarked by a judge, that the accused would sometimes ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... synonymously? Or is it meant that this airy gentry shall come in a Minuet step, and go off in a Jig? The phenomenon of a tripping crank is indeed novel, and would doubtless ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... me, and Dick Burdas he told me, and it was like this. When they got to the race-course,—it was the first races they'd had in Rochester,—all the gentry was there, and those that knew her always made a deal of her, she had such half-shy, winning ways. And she seemed very bright, Dick said, talking with the governor's lady, who is full of fun and sparkle. The carriages were all together, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various

... nobility and of the clergy, and to national pride. The fiery Count of Artois arose, and exclaimed that even if the King submitted to the encroachments of the Pope, the nobility would not suffer them, and that the gentry would never acknowledge any temporal superior other than the King. The nobility and the Third Estate confirmed these words by their acclamations, and swore to sacrifice their properties and lives to defend the temporal independence of the kingdom. A Norman advocate, named Dubosc, procurator ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... name given to a record of the acts of fealty and homage done by the Scottish nobility and gentry in 1296 to Edward I. of England, and of value for the list it supplies of the nobles, gentry, burgesses, and clergy of the country at that period. The original written rolls of parchment have perished, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... deceived by appearances, and though you may call yourself what you will, I suspect you to be either the commander of a privateer, if not rather of a vile buccaneer. We have had visits before now from such gentry, and I should advise you to leave our shores ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston

... must be asked in as few words as possible; for I cannot deprive myself of the pleasure I expected to enjoy in the company of my good friends for a set of mad-headed masters. I wish brother John was here to settle these matters with the black gentry. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... home in the house on the Three-Notched Road, saw very few from out her old life. Those who had been her girlhood friends kept aloof. If their defection pained her, she gave no sign—she had something of her father's pride. Among the Republican gentry she was of course made much of, and she saw something of the plainer sort of her husband's friends. Tom Mocket came occasionally on business with Rand, and once he brought Vinie with him. Jacqueline liked the sandy-haired and freckled scamp, and made friends with Vinie. In the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... Treasury, or Academy, for the accomplishment of the English Gentry in Arguments of Discourse, Habit, Fashion, Behaviour, &c. all summed up in Characters of ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."

... the curiosity of the native boys. But while these lads often do not hesitate to force or pick a lock they will seldom go as far as to smash a door to effect an entrance; hence, if your lock is concealed your house is safe from all but professional thieves, and such gentry seldom waste their time to break open a shack which contains nothing of value to them. The latches shown by Figs. 193, 200, and 201 may be made very heavy and strong, and if the trigger in Fig. 200, the latch-string hole in Fig. 193, and ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard

... incurring the charge of undue officiousness. To lessen any objections that might occur they resolved to ask for nothing but permission to search for the fresco painting at their own expense; and should any remains of it be found, then to propose to the nobility and gentry of Florence an association for the purpose of completing the undertaking and effectually recovering the ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... it," thought Herbert. "I don't care to receive any attention from such gentry. But who would have thought the colonel was in league with stage robbers? I thought ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... gentry (and in honesty I must add the endowed clergy) are a survival of feudalism, as the capitalist is a survival of industrialism. Both have to a large extent survived their functions. The mailclad baron, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... sullenness, and refused the dying the consolation of their presence. Gennadius assumed the authority of the absent Patriarch, and was influential as a prophet. The powerful Brotherhood of the St. James', composed of able-bodied gentry and nobles who should have been militant at the gates, regarded the Emperor as under ban. Notaras and Justiniani quarrelled, and the feud spread to their ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... a task that she was forced to go out of the way; for they were in general extremely satisfied of the truth of the thing, and plainly saw that Mrs. Bargrave was no hypochondriac, for she always appears with such a cheerful air and pleasing mien that she has gained the favor and esteem of all the gentry, and it is thought a great favor if they can but get the relation from her own mouth. I should have told you before that Mrs. Veal told Mrs. Bargrave that her sister and brother-in-law were just come down from London to see her. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... incessant entry and exit of carts, waggons, traps, gigs, four-wheels, and a large number of private carriages. The number of private carriages is, indeed, very remarkable, as also the succession of gentlemen on thoroughbred horses—a proof of the number of resident gentry in the neighbourhood, and of its general prosperity. Cart-horses furbished up for sale, with straw-bound tails and glistening skins; 'baaing' flocks of sheep; squeaking pigs; bullocks with their heads ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... length the critical moment approached, and the finishing hand was to be put to the work. Poland, with the appearance of a popular government, was a singular aristocracy of a hundred thousand electors, consisting of the higher and the lower nobility, and the gentry; the people had no concern with the government. Yet still it was to be treated by the politician as a popular government, where those who possessed the greatest influence over such large assemblies were orators, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... become the tools of a faction, who arrogate to themselves the whole merit of what was a national act. We are governed by upstarts, who are unsettling the landmarks of our social system, and are displacing the influence of our landed gentry by that of a class of men who find their profit in our woes." The rule of the tradesman must be replaced by the rule of those whose lives are bound up with the land of their country. The art of government was not "the importation of nutmegs, and the curing of herrings;" but the political embodiment ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... and shabbiest London hackney-coach were a chariot of splendour and ease to it), we drove some distance into the sandy wilderness that surrounds the little town, to pay a visit to some of the resident gentry who had called upon us. The road was a deep wearisome sandy track, stretching wearisomely into the wearisome pine forest—a species of wilderness more oppressive a thousand times to the senses and imagination than any extent ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... neighbourhood is rocky, naked, and barren. The interior of the town is separated into three parts by as many gates. The first part is inhabited by the poorer classes, and appeared very wretched. In the two other parts the tradespeople and the gentry reside; they have an incomparably better aspect. The principal street, although uneven and stony, is sufficiently wide to allow carriages, and ponderous beasts of ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... ultimately force the Government is evident, but what is remarkable, perhaps, is the extraordinary rapidity with which the Crown was stripped of its new wealth by the gentry, and this can only be explained in ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc

... wars of the Roses, Royal Christmases under the Tudors, the Stuarts and the Kings and Queens of Modern England; Christmas at the Colleges and the Inns of Court; Entertainments of the nobility and gentry, and popular festivities; accounts of Christmas celebrations in different parts of Europe, in America and Canada, in the sultry lands of Africa and the ice-bound Arctic coasts, in India and China, at the Antipodes, in Australia and New Zealand, and in the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... Kingdoms of the Universe were reduc'd to; where your Royal Ancestors victoriously Reign'd for so many hundred years: How they were Governed, Parcell'd out, and deplorably inslav'd, and to what Low, Prostituted Lewdness they fell at last: where the Nobility and Gentry were the most contemn'd and despis'd part of them, and such Meane (and till then obscure) Villains Rul'd, and Tyrannized, that no Age, nor Time, or scarce a Parish Book makes mentions or cou'd show there was any such Name or Family. Yet these were those that ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... whole family looked for counsel and support, now showed all the energy and decision of his character. What he knew must be done sooner or later he did decidedly at first. The superfluities to which his family had been accustomed, were instantly abandoned. The great torment of decayed gentry is the remembrance of their former station, and a weak desire still to appear what their fortune no longer allows them to be. This folly Mr. Percy had not to combat in his family, where all were eager to resign even more of their own comforts than the occasion required. It was the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... th' time. They was very good to me, th' hands was,—very good. Ther' 's lots o' th' Master's people down there, though they never heard His name: preachers don't go there. But He'll see to 't. He'll not min' their cursin' o' Him, seein' they don't know His face, 'n' thinkin' He belongs to th' gentry. I knew it wud come right wi' me, when times was th' most bad. ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... what in the recesses of the underground city, or elsewhere. In vain did I warn them that their every step was dogged, and that their every word and action were noted by spies who crept after them continually, since twice I caught one of these gentry in the act. They were ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... 'What have they been doing to this here gold?' My grandfather, as I said before, was connected with a gang of shorters, and sometimes shortened money, and at other times passed off what had been shortened by other gentry. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... times, is the region about the junction of the Inn and the Salzach. Its hero is a depraved young peasant, who gets the idea that the life of a robber knight would be preferable to hard work upon his father's farm. So he dresses himself in fine clothes to ape the gentry, becomes a robber and commits all manner of outrages until one day he is caught and hanged by a party of his victims. In the course of his career he revisits his former home and compares notes with his father. The selection is from Btticher's translation ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... Mary Difficulties of William's Enterprise Conduct of James after the Trial of the Bishops Dismissions and Promotions Proceedings of the High Commission; Sprat resigns his Seat Discontent of the Clergy; Transactions at Oxford Discontent of the Gentry Discontent of the Army Irish Troops brought over; Public Indignation Lillibullero Politics of the United Provinces; Errors of the French King His Quarrel with the Pope concerning Franchises The Archbishopric of Cologne Skilful Management of William His Military and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Personally, I am dead against the burning of books. A far worse, because a corrupt, proceeding, was the scandalously horrid fate that befell the monastic libraries at our disgustingly conducted, even if generally beneficent, Reformation. The greedy nobles and landed gentry, who grabbed the ancient foundations of the old religion, cared nothing for the books they found cumbering the walls, and either devoted them to vile domestic uses or sold them in shiploads across the ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... All of these phenomenal gentry claimed to subsist entirely on stones, but their modern followers hardly dare make such claims, so that the ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... father answered. "Human nature is very selfish, and then as now men who worked for the general welfare regardless of their own petty preferences were rare. To the side of the enemies of the infant invention flocked every one with a grievance. The gentry argued that the installation of locomotives would frighten the game out of the country and ruin the shooting. Other opposers contended that the smoke from the engines would not only kill the birds but in time kill the patrons of the railroads as well. ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett

... was not made in the army. Rather was it becoming no place for a poor gentleman but the paradise of rich bounders, brainy little squits of swotters, and commission-without-training nondescripts—thanks to the growing insecurity of things among the army class and gentry generally. If she were really penniless he might—as a Captain—ask her to share his poverty—but was it likely shed be a spinster ten years hence—even if he were a Captain so soon? Promotion is not violently rapid in the Cavalry.... And yet he simply ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... heard it, but she would never have married me if Darrell—Major Darrell, he was—had not jilted her. She told me once, to spite me, that she worshipped the ground the fellow trod on. And he was a cad—confound him!—one of those light-hearted gentry who dance with girls and make love to them, and then boast of their conquests. But he had a way with him, and she never cared for anyone again. She has told me so again ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... rules for a substantive; as, 'A multitude, multitudes; a crowd, crowds;' &c. Substantives which imply plurality in the singular number, and consequently have no other plural, generally require a plural verb. They are cattle, cavalry, clergy, commonalty, gentry, laity, mankind, nobility, peasantry people, populace, public, rabble, &c. [;] as, 'The public are informed.' Collective nouns which form a regular plural, such as, number, numbers; multitude, multitudes; have, like all other substantives, a singular verb, when they are in the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... Mr. Davis, you sees a good bit of the gentry, too, in your way, when you goes in to houses, as it might be the Squire's for to put up a shelf, or mend a window, and I don't ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin

... suburb as a physical fact only. As a body politic, we were a part of the great city, and those twain demons of encroachment, Taxes and Assessments, had definitively won in their battle with both the farmers and the country-house gentry. To the south, the farms had been wholly routed out of existence. A few of the old family estates were kept up after a fashion, but it was only as the officers of a defeated garrison are allowed to take their ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... turned all money-wise, till it became fixture and habit with me; and I took nae time for pleasures. But when I heard of your fight yestreen, and how you begawked him that we are to mention no more, and of your skirmishes and by-falls with these gentry of your own land, my silly auld blood leapit in my briskit. And when I was a limber lad like yourself, I do think truly that once I might hae likit weel to hae been lot and part of siclike stir and hazard, and to see ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... have heard my grandfather, who was a scholar, say that the Lyttonses was landed gentry in the old country long before the Cavendishers followed of their lord and marster William the Conkerer across the channil. And so I don't approve of your sliting of the Lyttonses for them there Cavendishers. Spesherly as you're ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... finer-looking man, and somehow he reminded me of an ancient Dane. Not that I know much of ancient Danes, though I knew a modern Dane who did me out of ten pounds; but I remember once seeing a picture of some of those gentry, who, I take it, were a kind of white Zulus. They were drinking out of big horns, and their long hair hung down their backs. As I looked at my friend standing there by the companion-ladder, I thought that if he only let his grow a little, put one of those chain shirts on to his great ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... two of what is known as gentry's houses in Northbourne. Oddly enough, each of them finished off the half-circle of cottages, and in that way they stared across the bay at one ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell

... the gentry were struck down by it—Alick Corfield and the new occupant of Lionnet, that Mr. Gryce who never went to church, and who was assumed in consequence to have neither a soul to be saved by God nor a heart to be touched ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... single vote. The temper of the country gentlemen on this subject was indicated by that of Parliament; and it was well known that the wisest of the Queen's Councillors, Burleigh, Walsingham, and Knollys, were at one in this matter with the gentry. If their common persecution did not wholly succeed in fusing these two sections of religious opinion into one, it at any rate gained for the Presbyterians a general sympathy on the part of the Puritans, which raised them from a clerical clique ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... Venice but in Athens. And now, king of Norway and conqueror, for the time, of Denmark, why should he not take England, as Sweyn and Canute took it sixty years before, when the flower of the English gentry perished at the fatal battle of Assingdune? If he and his half-barbarous host had conquered, the civilisation of Britain would have been thrown back, perhaps, for centuries. But ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... lower parts of South Carolina, though far from being united, were generally attached to the revolution, and had entered into the war with zeal. They were conducted by a high spirited and intelligent gentry, who ardently sought independence as a real ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall

... Sophisticate. Shrive but their Titles, and their Money poise; A Laird and Twenty Pence,[27] pronounc'd with Noise, When constru'd, but for a plain Yeoman go, And a good sober Two-pence, and well so. Hence then,'you Proud Imposters, get you gone, You Picts in Gentry and Devotion, You Scandal to the Stock of Verse, a Race Able to bring the Gibbet in Disgrace. Hyperbolus by suffering did traduce The Ostracism, and sham'd it out of Use. The Indian that Heaven did forswear Because he heard some Spaniards were there. Had he but known ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... 1760's and 1770's, were surprised to find Virginia and other American colonies to be economically prosperous, socially mature, and attractive places in which to live. Englishman after Englishman wrote about Virginians who lived in a style befitting English country gentry and London merchants. Over and over again they noted the near absence of poverty, even on the frontier. Their discoveries matched English political needs. Not only was it necessary for the Americans to assume a greater share of the financial burdens, ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... several nouns which are usually alike in both numbers. Thus, deer, folk, fry, gentry, grouse, hose, neat, sheep, swine, vermin, and rest, (i. e. the rest, the others, the residue,) are regular singulars, but they are used also as plurals, and that more frequently. Again, alms, aloes, bellows, means, news, odds, shambles, and species, are proper plurals, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... elevating a finger to the other, in a manner and with an impressive look that was instantly comprehended. "I neither agree wholly with the one nor the other of these gentlemen. 'Tis said that, since our appearance on the coast, the dwellings of many of the gentry are guarded by small detachments of soldiers ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... as "viceroys over" his predecessors, and who were dismayed at encountering a man whose previously acquired knowledge of the country which he came to govern, enabled him to dispense with the assistance and dictation of this red-tape camarilla. Loud were the complaints of these gentry at what they called the despotism of the new governor-general, on finding themselves excluded from that participation in state secrets in which they had long reveled, in a country where so much advantage may be derived from knowing beforehand what is coming at headquarters. But much ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... centuries they formed part of the Swedish monarchy, deriving thence in large measure their literature, civilisation, and institutions. To this day the Swedish tongue is used by about one-half of their gentry and burghers. On the annexation of Finland by Alexander I., in consequence of the Franco-Russian compact framed at Tilsit in 1807, he made to their Estates a solemn promise to respect their constitution and laws. Similar engagements have been made by his successors. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... different social positions. Formerly the clubs were strictly exclusive, and, indeed, this feature was never lost, but in every community there would be some novi homines, clever men many of them, whom the old gentry were quite willing to recognize, though a marked difference in culture prevented family visiting. These could be admitted to membership, and at the club-house could be met on equal terms. The hunting feature was always preserved, though few of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... all things went in the town as this sweet-natured gentleman would have them go, the town was in a most happy condition. Now there were no jars, no chiding, no interferings, no unfaithful doings in all the town; every man in Mansoul kept close to his own employment. The gentry, the officers, the soldiers, and all in place, observed their order. And as for the women and the children of the town, they followed their business joyfully. They would work and sing, work and sing, from ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... war with Scotland, hostages were taken from the Welsh chiefs, and were kept in English castles for several years. But the last lesson had proved effectual. The Welsh settled down peaceably on their lands and generally adopted the English customs. Except a few great lords, their gentry were still the representatives of their old families. Only five men in all had received the last punishment of the law for sanguinary rebellions extending over eighteen years of the King's reign. Of any massacre of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... there were certainly two families: one at Cottenham, co. Cambridge, and another at Braintree, co. Essex, in comfortable circumstances as yeomen farmers. Within fifty years more (1563), one of the family, Thomas, of Southcreeke, co. Norfolk, had entered the ranks of the gentry sufficiently to have his coat-of-arms recognized by the Herald Cooke, who conducted the Visitation of Norfolk in that year. From that date the majority of the family have been in good circumstances, with perhaps more than the average of its ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... demands. Yet the last mail from China brings the news that the foreign residents there are intensely dissatisfied with the result of the settlement. This was to be expected. Any settlement short of one effected by war would have met the disapproval of these gentry. The interests of the Chinese and the foreign merchants are too antagonistic to admit of impartial judgment on questions of this sort. England, in their opinion, could gain greater concessions by war than by negotiations—ergo, they would have all such troubles ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... Charity Concert? Charity begins at home, says he: and if I welcome you gentry on behalf of the poor of London, why, it follows you grant me the right to make a beginning with the poor of our parts down here. He puts it so, no master nor mistress neither could refuse him. Why, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... near the gentry and the nobles of Buckingham and Berkshire had gathered to the birth-day ball—for such was the occasion ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... gentry, I dare boldly take Thy honourable othe: and yet some say Thou and thy most renowmed noble brother Came to the Court first in a keele of sea-coale. ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... wire!" Instantly I regarded Billington with a new interest. So at last I had met one of those famous gentry of whom I had ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... "distinguished" Chrysaora writes from Paris, dating October 20, 1839, "On the other hand, Homoeopathy is commencing to make an inroad into England by the way of Ireland. At Dublin, distinguished physicians have already embraced the new system, and a great part of the nobility and gentry of that city have emancipated themselves from the English fashion and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Province of New York, offered fifty pounds to discover the author or authors. The paper read as follows: "Whereas, a glorious stand for Liberty did appear in the Resentment shown to a Set of Miscreants under the Name of Stamp Masters, in the year 1765, and it is now feared that a set of Gentry called Commissioners (I do not mean those lately arrived at Boston), whose odious Business is of a similar nature, may soon make their appearance amongst us in order to execute their detestable office: It is therefore ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... those critics wrote about me. They were not afraid of lowering themselves by writing seriously about a "mere music hall comedian." Aye, I've had wise gentlemen of the London press speak so of me. They canna understand, yon gentry, why all the fuss is made about Harry Lauder. They're a' for the Art Theatre, and this movement and that. But they're no looking for what's natural and unforced i' the theatre, or they'd be closer to-day to ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder

... monkey into his organ! For the Aurist only took a mug, And poured in his ear some acoustical drug, That, instead of curing, deafened him rather, As Hamlet's uncle served Hamlet's father! That's the way with your surgical gentry! And happy your luck If you don't get stuck Through your liver and lights at a royal entry, Because you ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... to watch him pass, returning impassively to work as he disappeared. Two or three labouring men also stared; one even commented to a fellow worker that "these yere motors take no more heed o' decent hours than o' natural distances. Five in the mornin' weren't part o' the gentry's day when I were a boy," he grumbled, "and five miles were five miles, no more nor less. 'Tisn't ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... the Whigs was totally without heart or enthusiasm. The Southern wing of the party had dictated the platform, but did not like Gen. Scott. Stephens and Toombs, of Georgia, and Jones and Gentry, of Tennessee, refused to support him. The Northern Whigs were greatly embarrassed, and while they felt constrained to support the candidate, tried to relieve their consciences by "spitting upon the platform" on which he stood. Mr. Webster did not disguise his hostility to the ticket, and predicted ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... shrugged her shoulders. No one knew anything about her. She never came out of the park gates, but sometimes you could see her wandering about inside by herself. She saw no one. Haddo had long since quarrelled with the surrounding gentry; and though one old lady, the mother of a neighbouring landowner, had called when Margaret first came, she had not been admitted, and the visit was ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham

... 13th to the 16th we had various reports of the advancing and retiring of the enemy; parties of armed men rudely entered the town and diligent search was made for tories. Some of the gondola gentry broke into and pillaged Rd Smith's house on the bank. About noon this day [16th] a very terrible account of thousands coming into the town, and now actually to be seen on Gallows Hill: my incautious son caught up the spyglass, and was running towards the mill to look at them. ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton

... their favorite chairs on the little stoop in front of Byers' Grocery Store, and approach anything resembling daily toil. There had been a Squire in the Weaver family three generations back, and Peleg held firmly to established precedent. He might be landed gentry, but he was no tiller of the soil, and he secretly looked down on his elder brother for ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester

... men of Elizabeth's reign, appear to have been fully disposed to profit by the example and injunctions of her father. Italian masters were invited over; the art of managing horses became an universal accomplishment, among the nobility and gentry of England; but most of the professors, both of equitation and farriery, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various

... Mare. And it is a long Pullman ride from Spoon River to the bee-droned gardens where De la Mare's old women sit and sew. Over here we have to wait for Barrie or Yeats or Padraic Colum to tell us about the fairies, and Cecil Sharp to drill us in their dances and songs. The gentry are not native in our hearts, and we might as ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... amongst the nobility and landed gentry, a fact vaguely hinted at by the white or yellow lettering on the tin deed boxes that lined the walls of his offices, setting forth such names and statements as: "The Cave Estate," "Sir Jardine Jardine," "The Blundell Estate," and so forth and so on. He knew everyone, and everything about everyone, ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... hypocritical faces, flit, and stalk, and sadden round us. It seems to me," continued the witty Count, in a lower whisper, "as if the old king, having fairly buried his glory at Ramilies and Blenheim, had summoned all these good gentry to sing psalms over it! But are you waiting for a ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... you, and may Dom. Tetard soon have the pleasure of drinking a glass of wine with us both, in his house at Kingsbridge. I mean, after the British gentry have left it. I should have written to you before, but I have been waiting these three weeks past for Colonel Wadsworth to leave Philadelphia. He will inform you of the cursed slavish life I lead at the treasury office. I am obliged to attend it even on Saturday nights, which places me ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... The instance I shall cite will be a true picture of courtiers. Their Majesties had removed from Richmond to their temporary palace in Leicester-fields(100)on the very evening of their receiving notice of their accession to the Crown, and the next day all the nobility and gentry in town crowded to kiss their hands; my mother amongst the rest, who, Sir Spencer Compton's designation, and not its evaporation, being known, could not make her way between the scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor could approach nearer to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... of difficulties; but I know a Tedesco Colonel (in Italy an Austrian is called a Tedesco), who will probably be able to do the needful for us: we will ask him to come and dine with us. Business or quarrels can all be settled with these gentry when they are feeding." ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... Egyptian race. So I ventured to approach them, but very softly, like a hen treading upon hot embers, that I might learn who they were; and at length I took the liberty of addressing them in this guise, with my head and back lowered horizontally: "Fair assembly, as I perceive that you are gentry from distant parts, will you deign to take a Bard along with you, who is desirous of travelling?" At these words the hurly-burly was hushed, and all fixed their eyes upon me: "Bard," squeaked one—"travel," said another—"along with us," said the third. By this time I saw ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... and this raillery had been a safety-valve for her envy. Now, however, and from henceforward, the case would be very different. Now the Lookalofts would boast that their aspirations had been sanctioned by the gentry of the country; now they would declare with some show of truth that their claims to peculiar consideration had been recognized. They had sat as equal guests in the presence of bishops and baronets; they had been curtseyed to by Miss Thorne on her own ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... the whistle to blow from the Street at dusk. I, born with my century, was familiar with these things; but my mother forbade my meddling with them. I expect she knew enough herself—all the resident gentry did. But Ralph—though he was to some extent of the new school, and used to boast that, if applied to, he "would grant a warrant against any Free Trader"—never did, as a matter of fact, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... and will try to confuse others, by deliberately clumsy statements of these most elementary ideas. Surely if there were no other argument for a change of type in the House, these poor knitted brows, these public perspirations of the gentry who "cannot understand ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells

... to please you, Miss Cullen," I said, "and I'd like to give Lord Ralles a chance to show us how to handle those gentry; but it's not to be done." I really should have been glad to have the road agents pay ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford

... son of one of the inferior gentry received as page by a nobleman wore his lords livery, but had it of more costly materials than were used for the footmen, and was the immediate attendant of his patron, who was expected to give him a reputable start in life ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... the beginning. Well, that doesn't worry me. But I should like to know how he expects to get more money out of me. I don't understand the ways of this gentry." ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger

... old stone building adjoining seemed to be 300 or 400 years old, and might have been used for religious services by the Rectors and their households. Parson's Green was once a very fashionable place; in Strype's edition of Stow's "Survey" it is commented on as having "very good houses for gentry." St. Dionis' Church is a noticeable object, built of red brick, with Bath stone dressings. Though only consecrated on June 18, 1885, it carries with it associations from an older building, St. Dionis Backchurch, which stood at the corner ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... sent round by Lady Royland to several of the gentry residing at different places, asking for help if it were needed, and at the same time offering the castle ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... the mild cigarette to which he was reduced, "as Mr. Paul Post puts his art, eh? Art for Art's sake —Science for the sake of Science. I know those enthusiastic egomaniac gentry. They vivisect you without blinking. I'm enough of a Forsyte to give them the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... than two "I'll give thee's."' Then there's my master, who ought to stroke me down and pet me to make me turn wool and carded cotton; he says if he gets hold of me he'll tie me naked to a tree and double the tale of lashes on me. These tender-hearted gentry should consider that it's not merely a squire, but a governor they are asking to whip himself; just as if it was 'drink with cherries.' Let them learn, plague take them, the right way to ask, and beg, and behave themselves; for all times are not alike, nor are people always in good humour. I'm now ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... if this trail might be just such a one as one would expect robbers to frequent, for it would of course be expected that Californians would carry considerable money with them, and we might reasonably look out for this sort of gentry at any turn of the trail. We were generally without weapons, and we should have to deliver on demand, and if any one was killed the body could easily be concealed in the thick brush on either side of the trail, and no special search for anyone ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... invitations from distinguished people, nobility and gentry as well as men of letters, to spend the week-end with them. But he declined them all. He needed his vacation, he said, for rest. He had neither the strength nor the spirit for ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson



Words linked to "Gentry" :   squirearchy, upper class, upper crust



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