Word.ws English Dictionary

donatary captain

donatary captain noun: one who held a donatary captaincy; a nobleman who had hereditary authority (granted in the 1530s) over a large tract of land in colonial Brazil, and who was responsible for paying taxes to the king and for seeing that the land was settled, developed, and defended against indigenous people and foreign invaders.

Noun

donatary captain (plural donatary captains)

  1. (historical) One who held a donatary captaincy; a nobleman who had hereditary authority (granted in the 1530s) over a large tract of land in colonial Brazil, and who was responsible for paying taxes to the king and for seeing that the land was settled, developed, and defended against indigenous people and foreign invaders.
    • The donatary captains were thus key figures in the debate, and their charters were the crucial documents to be interpreted.1985, Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society, page 254
    • To profit from their grants, the donatary captains required an auxiliary population of Portuguese settlers.1994, Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective, page 53

Forms of donatary captain

pluraldonatary captains

Questions about donatary captain

What does donatary captain mean?
Donatary captain means one who held a donatary captaincy; a nobleman who had hereditary authority (granted in the 1530s) over a large tract of land in colonial Brazil, and who was responsible for paying taxes to the king and for seeing that the land was settled, developed, and defended against indigenous people and foreign invaders.
What part of speech is donatary captain?
Donatary captain is a noun.
What is the plural of donatary captain?
The plural of donatary captain is donatary captains.

Words near donatary captain in the dictionary

  1. donas
  2. donat
  3. donatable
  4. donataries
  5. donatary
  6. donatary captain
  7. donatary captaincies
  8. donatary captaincy
  9. donatary captains
  10. donate
  11. donated

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: donatary captain (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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