Word.ws English Dictionary

Gloriana

Gloriana proper noun: sobriquet for Elizabeth I (1533–1603), Queen of England and Ireland.

Proper noun

Gloriana

  1. Sobriquet for Elizabeth I (1533–1603), Queen of England and Ireland.
    • In “The Sayings of Queen Elizabeth” (The Bodley Head; 16s.), Mr. Chamberlin deals very faithfully with a scandal that has nothing to do with sixteenth-century gossip about the Queen’s morals. It is a purely academic outrage: Froude’s Bowdlerisations of Gloriana’s good things, which the historian...1924 February 23, J[ames] D[avid] Symon, “Books of the Day”, in The Illustrated London News, London: The Illustrated London News and Sketch, Ltd., page 321, column 1
    • The cult of Gloriana was skilfully created to buttress public order and, even more, deliberately to replace the pre-Reformation externals of religion, the cult of the Virgin and saints with their attendant images, processions, ceremonies and secular rejoicing.1977, Roy Strong, “Introduction: The Last Pageant”, in The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry, Berkeley, Calif.; Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, part...
  2. A female given name.
    • After Mr. Smith’s decease, she m. for a 2d husband, and as his 2d wife, Dr. George Muirson of Setauket, L. I. (son of Rev. George Muirson of Hempstead, L. I., and Gloriana Smith, dau. of Col. William Smith).1874, Benjamin W[oodbridge] Dwight, The History of the Descendants of John Dwight, of Dedham, Mass., volume I, New York, N.Y.: John F. Trow & Son, […], page 1103
    • The little stranger is named Gloriana Craig. She arrived on June 24, 1922.1922, Union Electric Quarterly, page 20

Examples of Gloriana in a sentence

  • It is a purely academic outrage: Froude’s Bowdlerisations of Gloriana’s good things, which the historian paraphrased loosely when he should have transcribed them accurately.1924 February 23, J[ames] D[avid] Symon, “Books of the Day”, in The Illustrated London News, London: The Illustrated London News and...
  • In Spanish eyes, the Great Elizabeth was neither ‘Gloriana’ nor ‘Good Queen Bess’, but ‘la inglesona’.1990 November, Anthony Gooch, “The Falklands War and a Very Special Relationship: The Hispanic World and the Anglo-Saxon World: Part One”...
  • In Hymnes to Astraea (1599) John Davies characterised Gloriana’s rule as captivating her subjects with an authority based on honour and ‘straight rule’: […]1992, S.P. Cerasano, Marion Wynne-Davies, “‘From Myself, My Other Self I Turned’: An Introduction”, in Gloriana’s Face: Women, Public and...
  • After the early seventeenth century, such cruelty would never be seen again in England, but it was part and parcel of the reign of Gloriana and the gentlemen of the Privy Council kept it that way.2001, M[eirion] J[ames] Trow, Taliesin Trow, “Machevill”, in Who Killed Kit Marlowe?: A Contract to Murder in Elizabethan England, Sutton...

Synonyms of Gloriana

Origin of Gloriana

Coined by English poet Edmund Spenser to represent Elizabeth I in his poem The Faerie Queene (1590), from Latin glōria (“glory”) + -ana, from Latin -āna, feminine of -ānus (“of or pertaining to”).

Questions about Gloriana

What does Gloriana mean?
Gloriana means sobriquet for Elizabeth I (1533–1603), Queen of England and Ireland.
How do you use Gloriana in a sentence?
It is a purely academic outrage: Froude’s Bowdlerisations of Gloriana’s good things, which the historian paraphrased loosely when he should have transcribed them accurately.
What part of speech is Gloriana?
Gloriana is a proper noun.

Words near Gloriana in the dictionary

  1. glore
  2. glored
  3. Glores
  4. gloria
  5. Gloriagate
  6. Gloriana
  7. Glorianna
  8. glorias
  9. gloriation
  10. gloriations
  11. glorie

Source and license

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