Dictionary

raise to the ermine en · VERB

Etymology

Since ermine robes were traditionally worn by members of the House of the Lords, and by high-ranking judges in the English courts.

Meanings

1. (Commonwealth) To ennoble; to appoint someone to the House of Lords or the judiciary.
   • The last Australian raised to the ermine was the Rt Hon Richard Gardiner Casey, who became a life peer as Baron Casey of Berwick and the City of Westminster in 1960. 1989, Evan Whitton, The Hillbilly Dictator: Australia's Police State:
   • THE Times, in a late article on the judicial system, in reference to the objection that, 'by multiplying judicial officers an inferior order of men must be raised to the ermine,' remarked that, if fifty years ago it was easy to select fifteen judges from the mass of practising barristers, it ought to be quite as easy to choose twenty or twenty-five now from a field of selection three or four times as wide. 1879, The Law Journal, page 111:
   • Burnet styles him "this vicious drunkard raised to the ermine." Evelyn terms him "most ignorant but most daring cruel and a slave to the Court" 1907, Joshua James Foster, The Stuarts: Being Outlines of the Personal History of the Family:

Forms

Coordinates

raise to the purple