Word.ws English Dictionary

burgesses

burgesses is the plural of burgess.

Meaning of burgess

Noun

burgess (plural burgesses)

  1. An inhabitant of a borough with full rights; a citizen.
    • In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass. In this way all respectable burgesses, down to fifty years ago, spent their evenings.1892, Walter Besant, chapter III, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC
  2. (historical) A town magistrate.
  3. (UK, historical) A representative of a borough in the Parliament.
  4. (US, historical) A member of the House of Burgesses, a legislative body in colonial America, established by the Virginia Company to provide civil rule in the colonies.
  5. (Saskatchewan) A person who pays municipal taxes, a ratepayer.

See all 11 meanings of burgess

Phrases with burgesses

Questions about burgesses

What is burgesses the plural of?
Burgesses is the plural of burgess.

Words near burgesses in the dictionary

  1. burgess
  2. Burgess Hill
  3. Burgess Shale
  4. burgess-ship
  5. burgessdom
  6. burgesses
  7. Burgessian
  8. burgessies
  9. burgessy
  10. Burget
  11. Burgets

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: burgesses (page history and authors); burgess (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “burgesses.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/burgesses. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.