burgess

What it means

1. An inhabitant of a borough with full rights; a citizen.

   In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass. In this way all respectable burgesses, down to fifty years ago, spent their evenings.

   1892, Walter Besant, chapter III, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC

   1 more example

   If any burgess be appealed of a plea whereon wager of battle may issue by a villein or outdweller , let him defend himself by oath, that is to say by the 36 men, unless he is challenged in respect of a crime that the law requires him to defend by battle, in no case ought a burgess to fight against a villein if he have challenged him unless before the dispute he shall have quitted the burgage.

   1907, Antiquities of Sunderland and Its Vicinity - Volumes 5-7, page 73

2. historicalA town magistrate.
3. UKhistoricalA representative of a borough in the Parliament.

In a sentence

In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass. In this way all respectable burgesses, down to fifty years ago, spent their evenings.

1892, Walter Besant, chapter III, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC

Where it comes from

1. Proto-Indo-European*bʰerǵʰ-
2. Proto-Germanic*burgz“stronghold, city”
3. Frankish*burg
4. Latinburgus
5. Late Latinburgensis
6. Anglo-Normanburgeis“town-dweller”
7. Middle Englishburgeis
8. Englishburgess

From Middle English burgeis, from Anglo-Norman burgeis (“town-dweller”), of Proto-Germanic origin; either from Late Latin burgensis (from Latin burgus), or from Frankish *burg, both from Proto-Germanic *burgz (“stronghold, city”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerǵʰ-. See also borough, bourgeois, burgish.