Word.ws English Dictionary

donatary captains

donatary captains is the plural of donatary captain.

Meaning of donatary captain

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

Questions about donatary captains

What is donatary captains the plural of?
Donatary captains is the plural of donatary captain.

Words near donatary captains in the dictionary

  1. donataries
  2. donatary
  3. donatary captain
  4. donatary captaincies
  5. donatary captaincy
  6. donatary captains
  7. donate
  8. donated
  9. donatee
  10. donatees
  11. Donatelli

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: donatary captains (page history and authors); 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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