aristocrat

From French aristocrate (a word from the French Revolution), from aristocratie (English aristocracy), from Ancient Greek ἄριστος (áristos, “best”) (compare Old English ar) + κράτος (krátos, “rule”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈæɹɪstəˌkɹæt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /əˈɹɪstəkɹæt/
• Rhymes: -æt

aristocrat (plural aristocrats)

1. One of the aristocracy, nobility, or people of rank in a community; one of a ruling class; a noble (originally in Revolutionary France).
2. A proponent of aristocracy; an advocate of aristocratic government.
   • 1974: Plato (author) and Desmond Lee (translator), The Republic (2nd edition, revised; Penguin Classics; →ISBN, Translator’s Introduction, pages 51 and 53:

     Professor Fite, in The Platonic Legend, deprecates earlier idealization, and finds Plato to be an aristocrat, something of a snob, and the advocate of a restrictively organized society.

     […]

     Plato was, as has so often been observed, temperamentally an aristocrat. And he believed that the qualities needed in his rulers were, in general, hereditary, and that given knowledge and opportunity you could deliberately breed for them.

• plebeian

• See also Thesaurus:nobleman

• aristocracy
• aristocratic

• traciators