Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The landed gentry considered as a group or class.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In England, government by the squires, or “country gentlemen”—that is, the large landed proprietors, most of whom are justices of the peace, and who, before the Reform Bill of 1832, and to a certain extent after it, had great influence in the House of Commons.
  • noun The squires themselves collectively.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun the land-owning gentry

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the gentry who own land (considered as a class)

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

squire +‎ -archy

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Examples

  • From all that I could gather from her, I was led to suppose that he was a specimen of the idle, coarse-mannered, profligate, low-minded 'squirearchy' -- a result which might naturally have flowed from the circumstance of his being, as it were, outlawed from society, and driven for companionship to grades below his own -- enjoying, too, the dangerous prerogative of spending much money.

    The Purcell Papers — Volume 2 Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu 1843

  • Free trade was never the French cup of tea, but Bastiat was determined to import the success of Richard Cobden's crusade against the tariffs that protected the grain-growing British squirearchy a.k.a., the "corn laws".

    For Love of Laissez-Faire James Grant 2011

  • The fact that he ascended to the leadership of the Ulster Unionists was something of an upset, since he is not of the Anglo-Irish "squirearchy" that for generations has controlled unionism in Northern Ireland.

    Northern Ireland - The Way Ahead 1998

  • Cameron to go to war with Tory 'squirearchy' who claimed swimming pools, helipad, chandelier ... and ...

    WN.com - Articles related to Croatia closer to first woman PM 2009

  • Cameron to go to war with Tory 'squirearchy' who claimed swimming pools, helipad, chandelier ... and ...

    WN.com - Articles related to Croatia closer to first woman PM 2009

  • Cameron to go to war with Tory 'squirearchy' who claimed swimming pools, helipad, chandelier ... and ...

    WN.com - Articles related to Packing light makes a vacation better 2009

  • We Palinodes have carried one kind of squirearchy to its ridiculous conclusion, that’s all.

    More Work for the Undertaker Allingham, Margery, 1904-1966 1949

  • We Palinodes have carried one kind of squirearchy to its ridiculous conclusion, that’s all.

    More Work for the Undertaker Allingham, Margery, 1904-1966 1949

  • It is this ‘squirearchy’ that most resembles the situation in the Shire at the time of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

    superversive: Gondor, Byzantium, and Feudalism superversive 2010

  • Maria Friedman makes the innkeeper the epitome of narrow-minded prejudice, Jo Stone-Fewings embodies the idiocy of the local squirearchy and Teddy Kempner is the boobyish village bobby.

    The Invisible Man – review Michael Billington 2010

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