patrician en · ADJ
Pronunciation
- (Southern-England) audio
- /pəˈtɹɪʃən/
Etymology
Borrowed from Middle French patricien, from Latin patricius, derived from patrēs cōnscrīptī (“Roman senators”). May also have been derived from Latin patricius + -ian
Meanings
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Of or pertaining to the Roman patres (“fathers”) or senators, or patricians.
[…] 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.
1712 (date written), [Joseph] Addison, Cato, a Tragedy. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson, […], published 1713, →OCLC, Act I, scene i, pages 1-2:The cognomen was first used in patrician families, who were distinguished from the plebeians by their three names.
1945, E[lizabeth] G[idley] Withycombe, “Introduction”, in The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press, →OCLC, page xiv:
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Of or pertaining to a person of high birth; noble; not plebeian; aristocratic.
born in the patrician file of society
1829 May 2, [Walter Scott], Anne of Geierstein; or, The Maiden of the Mist. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] [Ballantyne and Company] for Cadell and Co., […]; London: Simpkin and Marshall, […], →OCLC:
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Characteristic of or appropriate to a person of high birth; classy.
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
2021 February 9, Christina Newland, “Is Tom Hanks part of a dying breed of genuine movie stars?”, in BBC:
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Politically active to help people in lower classes, especially in a patronizing or condescending way.
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.
2022 September 8, Michael Bird, This is Tomorrow: Twentieth-century Britain and its Artists, Thames & Hudson, →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.
2013 July 18, Doctor Martin Parker, Valerie Fournier, Patrick Reedy, The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Organization, Zed Books Ltd., →ISBN: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.
1995, New Statesman Society:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| patritian | alternative, obsolete | lexicographic | |
| more patrician | Degree=Cmp | lexicographic | |
| most patrician | Degree=Sup | lexicographic |