GENTLEMAN • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Gentleman

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/dʒˈɛntəlmən/ /dʒˈɛnəlmən/ Listen

noun

Gentleman n. (pl. gentlemen)

1.

A man well born; one of good family; one above the condition of a yeoman.

2.

One of gentle or refined manners; a well-bred man.

3.

(Her.) One who bears arms, but has no title.

4.

The servant of a man of rank. "The count's gentleman, one Cesario."

5.

A man, irrespective of condition; used esp. in the plural (= citizens; people), in addressing men in popular assemblies, etc. Note: In Great Britain, the term gentleman is applied in a limited sense to those having coats of arms, but who are without a title, and, in this sense, gentlemen hold a middle rank between the nobility and yeomanry. In a more extended sense, it includes every man above the rank of yeoman, comprehending the nobility. In the United States, the term is applied to men of education and good breeding of every occupation.

Gentleman commoner, one of the highest class of commoners at the University of Oxford.

Gentleman usher, one who ushers visitors into the presence of a sovereign, etc.

Gentleman usher of the black rod, an usher belonging to the Order of the Garter, whose chief duty is to serve as official messenger of the House of Lords.

Gentlemen-at-arms, a band of forty gentlemen who attend the sovereign on state occasions; formerly called gentlemen pensioners. (Eng.)

See images of 'Gentleman'

Etymology of 'Gentleman'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Gentleman" Quotes from Famous Books

... long in finding Mr. Freeland to be a very different man from Mr. Covey. Though not rich, Mr. Freeland was what may be called a well-bred southern gentleman, as different from Covey, as a well-trained and hardened Negro breaker is from the best specimen of the first families of the south. Though Freeland was a slaveholder, and shared many of the vices ...

— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... called, in a phrase he quoted with approval, "practical reason." He considered, also, that nothing can so assure the stability of a nation as an intelligent interest shared by a large portion of its citizens in the cultivation of the soil. The English country gentleman who divided his time between his duties in Parliament and those not less obligatory on his estates was in Cavour's eyes an almost ideal personage. It should be added that Cavour could not understand a country life which did not embrace solicitude for the ...

— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... not—'twas the weakness of youth and the use of the times!—I remember to have seen thee, Enrico, at Madrid, and a gayer or more accomplished gentleman was not known at the ...

— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... about the same time a leveret, which he hoped to tame by feeding it with a spoon. One morning, however, the leveret was missing, and as it could nowhere be discovered, it was supposed to have been carried off and killed by some strange cat or dog. A fortnight had elapsed, when, as the gentleman was seated in his garden, in the dusk of the evening, he observed his cat, with tail erect, trotting towards him, purring and calling in the way cats do to their kittens. Behind her came, gambolling merrily, and with perfect confidence, a little leveret,—the very one, ...

— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston

... great luxury to practise as a specialist in almost any class of diseases. The special practitioner has his own hours, hardly needs a night-bell, can have his residence out of the town in which he exercises his calling, in short, lives like a gentleman; while the hard-worked general practitioner submits to a servitude more exacting than that of the man who is employed in his stable or in his kitchen. That is the kind of life I have ...

— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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