Definitions

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

  • noun The class of yeomen; small freeholding farmers.
  • noun A British volunteer cavalry force organized in 1761 to serve as a home guard and later incorporated into the Territorial Army.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The collective estate or body of yeomen; yeomen collectively.
  • noun Service; retainers; those doing a vassal's service.
  • noun That which befits a yeoman.
  • noun A volunteer cavalry force originally embodied in Great Britain during the wars of the French revolution, and consisting to a great extent of gentlemen or wealthy farmers.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete The position or rank of a yeoman.
  • noun The collective body of yeomen, or freeholders.
  • noun A British volunteer cavalry force, growing out of a royal regiment of fox hunters raised by Yorkshire gentlemen in 1745 to fight the Pretender, Charles Edward; -- calle dalso yeomanry cavalry. The members furnish their own horses, have fourteen days' annual camp training, and receive pay and allowance when on duty. In 1901 the name was altered to imperial yeomanry in recognition of the services of the force in the Boer war. See Army organization, above.
  • noun [Eng.] certain bodies of volunteer cavalry liable to service in Great Britain only.

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

  • noun Class of small freeholders who cultivated their own land.
  • noun A British volunteer cavalry force organized in 1761 for home defense later incorporated into the Territorial Army.

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

  • noun a British volunteer cavalry force organized in 1761 for home defense later incorporated into the Territorial Army
  • noun class of small freeholders who cultivated their own land

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From yeoman +‎ -ry

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Examples

  • The perpetuation of a sturdy and independent yeomanry is one of the best guarantees we have for the perpetuation of democracy; and my faith is that democracy is the only system of government that is destined to last, the only system which contains within itself the seeds of continuity and life.

    Canada's Rural Problem 1916

  • True to his word, Jefferson started the University of Virginia to provide free higher education to the yeomanry, which is what the middle class was called back in the 1700s.

    Thom Hartmann; Free Public Education; Why We Should Have it, Why the Cons Hate it 2006

  • A writer already quoted refers to the poor whites of the ante-bellum South as constituting part of the last grade of a class distinguishable from both the unpropertied and the influential landowners, which might be termed a "yeomanry," but he notices their tendency to sink rather than rise in the social order. 16

    The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South 1921

  • These goshi, who were independent landowners, for the most part, formed a kind of yeomanry; but there were many points of difference between the social position of the goshi and that of the English yeomen.

    Japan: an Attempt at Interpretation Lafcadio Hearn 1877

  • But the American "yeomanry", that is, nine-tenths of the country, weren't having any.

    Latest Articles 2009

  • But the American "yeomanry", that is, nine-tenths of the country, weren't having any.

    American Thinker 2009

  • Places were to be kept by a detachment of the "yeomanry" of each company sent on at six o’clock for that purpose.

    London and the Kingdom - Volume I

  • He thinks that, corresponding to the countryman in New England, there were very moderately circumstanced whites in the South that might be taken as constituting a "yeomanry," but that below these were "the neglected people who ... were but little removed from the status of the settled Indian ....

    The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South 1921

  • Nine yeomanry regiments had been withdrawn from Palestine.

    Narrative Strategies 2009

  • However, these were victims not of a recent riot but of an ancient fracas: the Peterloo massacre in Manchester in August 1819 – the event that led to the foundation of the Manchester Guardian – when a troop of yeomanry charged into a political meeting, leaving 15 dead.

    Peterloo book is one of Unesco's first heritage documents 2010

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