grandees

Noun

grandee (plural grandees)

1. A high-ranking nobleman in Spain or Portugal.
   • Grandees of Spain are of two sorts, this Honour being sometimes personal, sometimes hereditary. The first, the King bids be covered themselves; the second, themselves and Heirs for ever. This is all the Ceremony in making a Grandee, neither do any other priviledges belong to it; so that it is but a...1670, Antoine de Brunel, François van Aerssen, A Journey Into Spain, page 38
2. (broadly) A person of high rank.
   • I indicated a chair, and he sat down. This grandee was the grandson of an American of considerable note in his day, and not wholly forgotten yet,—a man who came so near being a great man that he was quite generally accounted one while he lived.1880, Mark Twain [pseudonym] (Samuel L[anghorne] Clemens), chapter XXXVIII, in A Tramp Abroad; […], Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company; London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC, page 441

   Synonyms:

   magnate