Dictionary

belted earl en · NOUN

Meanings

1. An earl whose title goes back to the period prior to the 18th century when a sword and belt received from the monarch were tokens of that title.
   • It was pretty interesting to imagine things about them—to imagine that perhaps the girl who sat next to you was really the daughter of a belted earl, who had been stolen away from her parents in her infancy by a cruel nurse who died before she could confess. 1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 2, in Anne of Green Gables:
   • This William was the sixth belted earl of that house of Douglas. 1728, Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, The History of Scotland from 1436 to 1565, Glasgow, published 1749, page 14:
   • It was Boone Havock and his immense and parrot-squawking wife Queenie who were the great people, the belted earl and terraced countess, of the occasion […] 1945, Sinclair Lewis, Cass Timberlane: A Novel of Husbands and Wives, Chapter:

Forms

Relateds

belted knight