magnifico

plural magnificos · plural magnificoes

1. historicalobsoleteA grandee or nobleman of the Republic of Venice.

   I know—I've heard—but no wealth of the imagination can ever really quite reconstruct Tupworthy, the shoddy magnifico, in his immense porcine complacency, his monumental self-importance.

   1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC

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   For be ſure of this, / That the Magnifico is much beloued, / And hath in his effect, a voyce potentiall, / As double as the Dukes, he will diuorce you, / Or put vpon you what reſtraint, and greeuance, That law with all his might to inforce it on, / Weele giue him cable.

   c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Tragœdy of Othello, the Moore of Venice. […] (First Quarto), London: […] N[icholas] O[kes] for Thomas Walkley, […], published 1622, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii], pages 6–7

2. obsoleteA rector of a German university.