Word.ws English Dictionary

the quality

the quality noun: the upper class, the high society, the gentry; the people of quality.

Noun (1)

the quality pl (plural only)

  1. (UK, archaic, idiomatic, plural, plural-only) The upper class, the high society, the gentry; the people of quality.
    • 20 July 1713, Joseph Addison, The Guardian
      I shall appear at the masquerade dressed up in my feathers, that the quality may see how pretty they will look in their travelling habits.
    • The rector kept open house on that day, but by degrees the “quality” gave up going, and the fair, of course, became disreputable, till at last it was put down as a nuisance.1887, The, Athenaeum, p. 445

Noun (2) capitalized: the Quality

the Quality pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) Alternative letter-case form of the quality (the upper class)
    • I would have spoken further, but before I could get under way the door opened, revealing Ma Cream, and [my manservant Jeeves] shimmered silently from the room. Unless expressly desired to remain, he always shimmers off when what is called the Quality arrive.1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XIX, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC

Forms of the quality

alternative formthe Quality

Origin of the quality

From quality (“high social position”).

Questions about the quality

What does the quality mean?
The quality means the upper class, the high society, the gentry; the people of quality.
What part of speech is the quality?
The quality is a noun.

Words near the quality in the dictionary

  1. the proof is in the eating
  2. the proof is in the pudding
  3. the proof of the pudding is in the eating
  4. the proverbial dog that caught the car
  5. the purpose of a system is what it does
  6. the quality
  7. the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
  8. the rabbit died
  9. the race that stops a nation
  10. the rest is gravy
  11. the rest is history

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: the quality (page history and authors); the Quality (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-the quality.ogg.

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