Definition of "patriciate" []

• Nobility or aristocracy. (noun)
• The rank, position, or term of office of a patrician. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "No one, not even Mrs. Astor, could have turned this tinsel patriciate into a first-rate one."
• "The Good Shepherd: Robert De Niro's movie (skillfully written by Eric Roth) is a very persuasive and thoughtful study of how the youthful and more muscular scions of the Wasp patriciate imposed their values, their sense of entitlement, on the US and what that endeavor cost us - and the patricians ...."
• "The merchant patriciate of New York, with its faux English standards, gave no quarter; and although the New York ladies condescended to give a reception for Mrs. Lincoln, eventhis exercise in social charity was not quite free from malice, for Mrs. August Belmont, the grande doyenne of New York society, did not appear."