Middlemarch vocabulary

551 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.

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peerage


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Definition:
refers to a peer, i.e. a noble with a hereditary title that comes with privileges unavailable to the proles.
It can also refer to the aristocracy in general

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Uses:
One of his most rigid principles was to recognize no nobility in France but that of the peerage— the only families that might enjoy any privileges.

Honoré de Balzac. The Ball at Sceaux
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The whole of the Danish nobility were in attendance; consisting of a noble boy in the wash-leather boots of a gigantic ancestor, a venerable Peer with a dirty face who seemed to have risen from the people late in life,

Charles Dickens. Great Expectations (1861)
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"Seems kind of weird for someone our age to be a peer, don't you think?"

Ruth Ware. The Woman in Cabin 10, p.61 (2016)
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And yet he asked me: “Is it because you’ve taken a fancy to raise yourself to the peerage that you run after de Saint-Loup-en-Bray? You must be going through a fine crisis of snobbery. Tell me, are you a snob? I think so, what?”

Marcel Proust. In Search of Lost Time [volume 2]
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