Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun plural Persons of good family and relatively high station.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Persons of good breeding and family: a collective noun, with plural sense, and now generally with plural termination, gentlefolks.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun plural Generally in the United States in the plural form. Persons of gentle or good family and breeding.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun People of superior
social position .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun people of good family and breeding and high social status
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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These are what she calls gentlefolk's airs, I suppose!
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These are what she calls gentlefolk's airs, I suppose!
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These are what she calls gentlefolk's airs, I suppose!
House of the Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne 1834
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It were a better feeling if the "gentlefolk" would only patronize ornaments of a certain value, or none at all, but I suppose such a stretch of self-denial would be quite beyond the powers of resistance pertaining to human, or rather woman's nature.
Shams 1863
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In them he tells various fairy tales, of changeling children, and of the "gentlefolk".
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In them he tells various fairy tales, of changeling children, and of the "gentlefolk".
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In them he tells various fairy tales, of changeling children, and of the "gentlefolk".
planet.journals.ie 2008
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"Outside the towns in the West there are few of what _you_ would call gentlefolk," said he, with just the faintest emphasis of good-natured scorn for English prejudice; "nor are there any 'country houses' as you understand the name in England.
Lady Betty Across the Water Orson Lowell 1889
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"gentlefolk" followed Reynolds 'lantern towards the vicarage, and Mr. Thomas Reid, the conservative and melancholic sexton, put out the lights and locked the church doors, muttering a sour laudation of more primitive times, when "the gentlefolk minded their business."
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'gentlefolk' in the book are the merest marionettes, but there are descriptive passages of first-rate vigour, and the voice of wisdom is heard from the lips of an early Greek choregus in the figure of an old parson called Mr. Wyvern.
The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories George Gissing 1880
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