sahibdom

sahibdom noun: the condition of being a person of rank, especially a British person, in colonial India.

Noun

sahibdom (uncountable)

The condition of being a person of rank, especially a British person, in colonial India.
- ‘Oah!’ said Kim, firmly resolved to cling to his Sahibdom. ‘There was a box in the night that gave me bad talk. So I stopped it. Was it your box?’1900 December – 1901 October, Rudyard Kipling, “[HTTP://WWW.GUTENBERG.ORG/FILES/35555/35555-H/35555-H.HTM CHAPTER 9]”, in Kim, London: Macmillan and Co., published 1901, →OCLC
- That was the spirit of sahibdom that is not always quite commendable; it is the spirit that takes Anglo-Saxon women to the seething, stenching plains and holds them there high-chinned to stiffen their men-folk by courageous example, but it leads, too, to things not quite so womanly and good.1914, Talbot Mundy, chapter 17, in Rung Ho!, New York: Scribner, page 175

They would be free for ever of the smell of pukka sahibdom.1934 October, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], “Chapter 5”, in Burmese Days, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers...
But it was neither age nor sahibdom, but a much subtler intrusion that loosened the bonds between the children […]2008, Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Part 1, Chapter 3, p. 63:

alternative form	Sahibdom

From sahib + -dom.

What does sahibdom mean?: Sahibdom means the condition of being a person of rank, especially a British person, in colonial India.
How do you use sahibdom in a sentence?: They would be free for ever of the smell of pukka sahibdom.
What part of speech is sahibdom?: Sahibdom is a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: sahibdom (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “sahibdom.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sahibdom. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.