Word.ws English Dictionary

Edwardian

Edwardian adjective: of the period in British history from circa 1901 to 1910, when Edward VII ruled the British Empire.

Adjective

Edwardian (comparative more Edwardian, superlative most Edwardian)

  1. Of the period in British history from circa 1901 to 1910, when Edward VII ruled the British Empire.
    • If the kind of network we envisage is to be established, it would be unwise to begin any of its services hurriedly with older stock, which, however admirable in its day, now has an air of faded Edwardian splendour that is out of joint with the times.1962 December, “A new Pullman era?”, in Modern Railways, page 362
    • In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. […] The public realm is privatised, the regulations restraining the ultra–wealthy and the companies they control are abandoned, and Edwardian levels of inequality are almost fetishised.2013 May 17, George Monbiot, “Money just makes the rich suffer”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 23, page 19

Noun

Edwardian (plural Edwardians)

  1. (historical) A person from the Edwardian era.
    • So he began, being an Edwardian, by describing accurately and minutely the sort of house Hilda lived in, and the sort of house she saw from the window. House property was the common ground from which the Edwardians found it easy to proceed to intimacy.1924, Virginia Woolf, “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown”, in [Leonard Woolf], editor, Collected Essays, volume I, London: Hogarth Press, published 1966, →OCLC, page 331

Forms of Edwardian

Adjective
comparativemore Edwardian
superlativemost Edwardian
Noun
pluralEdwardians

Origin of Edwardian

From Edward + -ian.

Questions about Edwardian

What does Edwardian mean?
Edwardian means of the period in British history from circa 1901 to 1910, when Edward VII ruled the British Empire.
What part of speech is Edwardian?
Edwardian can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near Edwardian in the dictionary

  1. Edwarda
  2. Edwardean
  3. Edwardeanism
  4. Edwardes
  5. Edwardia
  6. Edwardian
  7. Edwardiana
  8. Edwardianism
  9. Edwardianisms
  10. Edwardianly
  11. Edwardians

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Edwardian (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: “Edwardian.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/edwardian. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.