Dictionary

pageanteer en · NOUN

Etymology

From pageant + -eer.

Meanings

1. One who produces a pageant.
   • This account of a fictional "Merchester" pageant by the novelist Arthur Quiller-Couch in his Brother Copas (1911) was based on his own experience as a writer and actor — or pageanteer, in contemporary parlance — involved with the 1908 Winchester National Pageant. 2010, Morna O'Neill, Michael Hatt, The Edwardian Sense: Art, Design, and Performance in Britain, page 43:
   • This show is being put on by Edward Hungerford, the master pageanteer, with a cast of some 250 people. 1937, Association of American Railroads. Signal Section, Proceedings - Volume 36, page 271:
   • In November, 1509, within six months after the renewal of his appointment at the accession of Henry VIII, Newark died, and his place as Master of the Children was filled by William Cornish,” the most eminent composer, poet, and pageanteer that had yet graced the Court. 2018, Charles William Wallace, The evolution of English drama up to Shakespeare, page 33:
   • The pageanteer, then, must be an effective scenewright as well as playwright. Spectacle is another demand often placed upon a pageant-drama. 1966, George McCalmon, Christian Hollis Moe, Creating historical drama:
2. One who performs a role in a pageant.
   • However, she also resented the fact that the titled women were given the more aristocratic pageant roles, in contradiction of the usual pageant ideal where pageanteers assumed roles that were the reverse of their own position in society. 2003, Felix Driver, David Gilbert, Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity:
   • Some well-to-do pageanteers evidently traveled around the country to appear in one pageant after another. 2010, Morna O'Neill, Michael Hatt, The Edwardian Sense, page 57:
   • We found that he had no real connexion with any church nor with the L.M.S., but had somehow managed to get enrolled as a pageanteer, with the intention, no doubt, of rifling any pockets that he found convenient. 1922, Arthur Porritt, The Best I Remember, page 90:
   • It was not, by a long way, every pageanteer who could afford to order or hire robes, cloaks, tunics, head-dresses from the professionals. Plenty of the smaller “parts” cut out their own costumes and held sewing-bees, sometimes at one house in the Pageant's neighbourhood, sometimes in another. 1940, Berta Ruck, Money Isn't Everything, page 122:
3. A contestant in a beauty contest.
   • For some women, this is their first pageant experience, while others are 'career' pageanteers, who started as young as four. 2002, Keith Lovegrove, Pageant: The Beauty Contest:
   • Nadja had not thought of the word elegant since her mother made her model for no real occasion one sequined monstrosity after another at Denise's Bridal Affair, pretending her daughter was a pageanteer and hadn't maxed out at a B-cup. 2013, Xhenet Aliu, Domesticated Wild Things, and Other Stories, page 69:
   • Already a model and formidable pageanteer —a runner-up in the 2006 Miss Paraguay contest—expect her to segue into a pitchwoman for digital cameras or cereal. 2008, Esquire: The Magazine for Men - Volume 150, page 121:

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