grandee

Borrowed from Spanish grande (adjective), from Latin grandis (“large, great”).

• IPA^(key): /ɡɹænˈdiː/

grandee (plural grandees)

1. A high-ranking nobleman in Spain or Portugal. [from 1590s]
   • 1670, Antoine de Brunel, François van Aerssen, A Journey Into Spain, page 38

     Grandees of Spain are of two sorts, this Honour being sometimes personal, sometimes hereditary. The first, the King bids be covered themselves; the second, themselves and Heirs for ever. This is all the Ceremony in making a Grandee, neither do any other priviledges belong to it; so that it is but a Chimerical and Airy Honour, without any profit; they which marry the Heiress of a Family of a Grandee of Spain, that is such hereditarily, become Grandees in right of their Wives.

2. (by extension) A person of high rank.

   Synonym: magnate

   • 1880, Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, page 441:

     I indicated a chair, and he sat down. This grandee was the grandson of an American of considerable note in his day, and not wholly forgotten yet,—a man who came so near being a great man that he was quite generally accounted one while he lived.

   • 1897, Thomas Anstey Guthrie, “X”, in Baboo Hurry Bungsho Jabberjee, B.A., page 78:

     Whereupon most did desist; but some, secreting their cigars in the hollow of their hands, took whiffs by stealth, and blushed to find it fame; while others, who were such grandees and big pots that their own convenience was the first and foremost desideratum, continued to smoke with lordliness and indifference.

3. The title for a high ranking nobleman in Spain or Portugal.

• grandee on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• Redange, agender, angered, derange, en garde, enraged, grenade