aristocrat

plural aristocrats

1. One of the aristocracy, nobility, or people of rank in a community; one of a ruling class; a noble (originally in Revolutionary France).

   The remains of a Roman aristocrat have been unearthed by archaeologists in northern England.

   2023 March 13, Lianne Kolirin, “Skeletal remains of Roman aristocrat discovered in hidden lead coffin”, in CNN, archived from the original on 19 Apr 2024

   1 more example

   Magazines kept aristocrats on the payroll to facilitate access to jet-set playgrounds like Corfu and Mustique.

   2025 June 27, Michael M. Grynbaum, “The Concorde-and-Caviar Era of Condé Nast, When Magazines Ruled the Earth”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 27 Jun 2025

2. A proponent of aristocracy; an advocate of aristocratic government.

   1 more example

   Professor Fite, in The Platonic Legend, deprecates earlier idealization, and finds Plato to be an aristocrat, something of a snob, and the advocate of a restrictively organized society. […] Plato was, as has so often been observed, temperamentally an aristocrat. And he believed that the qualities needed in his rulers were, in general, hereditary, and that given knowledge and opportunity you could deliberately breed for them.

   1974: Plato (author) and Desmond Lee (translator), The Republic (2nd edition, revised; Penguin Classics; →ISBN), Translator’s Introduction, pages 51 and 53

3. computingA cipher in which the original punctuation and spacing are retained.