patrician

• patritian (obsolete)

Borrowed from Middle French patricien, from Latin patricius, derived from patrēs cōnscrīptī (“Roman senators”).

• IPA^(key): /pətɹˈɪʃən/

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• Rhymes: -ɪʃən

patrician (plural patricians)

1. (Ancient Rome) A member of any of the families constituting the populus Romanus, or body of Roman citizens, before the development of the plebeian order; later, one who, by right of birth or by special privilege conferred, belonged to the senior class of Romans, who, with certain property, had by right a seat in the Roman Senate.
   • c. 1588–1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i], page 31, column 1:

     Noble Patricians, Patrons of my right, / Defend the iuſtice of my Cauſe with Armes.

2. A person of high birth; a nobleman.
3. One familiar with the works of the Christian Fathers; one versed in patristic lore or life.

• patrician blue

patrician (comparative more patrician, superlative most patrician)

1. Of or pertaining to the Roman patres (“fathers”) or senators, or patricians.
   • 1712 (date written), [Joseph] Addison, Cato, a Tragedy. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson, […], published 1713, →OCLC, Act I, scene i, page 1:

     […] I ſee
     Th’ Inſulting Tyrant prancing o’er the Field
     Strow’d with Rome’s Citizens, and drench’d in Slaughter,
     His Horſe’s Hoofs wet with Patrician Blood.

2. Of or pertaining to a person of high birth; noble; not plebeian; aristocratic.
   • 1829 May 2, [Walter Scott], Anne of Geierstein; or, The Maiden of the Mist. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh:  […] [Ballantyne and Company] for Cadell and Co., […]; London: Simpkin and Marshall, […], →OCLC:

     born in the patrician file of society

3. Characteristic of or appropriate to a person of high birth; classy.
   • 2021 February 9, Christina Newland, “Is Tom Hanks part of a dying breed of genuine movie stars?”, in BBC‎^[1]:

     Hanks' taste in projects and directors is undoubtedly patrician and with a few exceptions like 1993's Philadelphia, the first mainstream film about the Aids crisis, rarely provocative

4. Politically active to help people in lower classes, especially in a patronizing or condescending way.
   • 1995, New Statesman Society:

     It will speed the shrivelling of the patrician “one nation” Tories, who tried to curb the extremes of Thatcherism and ended by providing its veils.

   • 2013 July 18, Doctor Martin Parker, Valerie Fournier, Patrick Reedy, The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Organization, Zed Books Ltd., →ISBN:

     Saint-Simon was certainly a radical, and hostile to inherited privilege, but his bourgeois 'socialism' was of a patrician kind. Science, being a firm and certain kind of knowledge, a 'religion of Newton' or 'cult of Reason' essentially plays the key role in his grand scheme for social engineering.

   • 2022 September 8, Michael Bird, This is Tomorrow: Twentieth-century Britain and its Artists, Thames & Hudson, →ISBN:

     Where Ruskin's patrician socialism sought to create better conditions and 'higher' aspirations for the 'Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain', Sickert painted his working- and lower-middle-class subjects as if history, in the advance of mass culture and popular democracy, were on their side.

• matrician

• Patrician on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Borrowed from French patricien.

patrician m (plural patricieni)

1. (historical) patrician