| Library / English Dictionary |
GRANDEUR
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The quality of being magnificent or splendid or grand
Example:
advertisers capitalize on the grandness and elegance it brings to their products
Synonyms:
brilliance; grandeur; grandness; magnificence; splendor; splendour
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("grandeur" is a kind of...):
elegance (a refined quality of gracefulness and good taste)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "grandeur"):
eclat (brilliant or conspicuous success or effect)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The quality of elevation of mind and exaltation of character or ideals or conduct
Synonyms:
grandeur; magnanimousness; nobility; nobleness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("grandeur" is a kind of...):
honorableness; honourableness (the quality of deserving honor or respect; characterized by honor)
Attribute:
noble (having or showing or indicative of high or elevated character)
ignoble (completely lacking nobility in character or quality or purpose)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "grandeur"):
high-mindedness; idealism; noble-mindedness (elevated ideals or conduct; the quality of believing that ideals should be pursued)
sublimity (nobility in thought or feeling or style)
Context examples:
There were six ambassadors, with a train of about five hundred persons, and their entry was very magnificent, suitable to the grandeur of their master, and the importance of their business.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
But all these tokens of past grandeur were miserably decayed and dirty; rot, damp, and age, had weakened the flooring, which in many places was unsound and even unsafe.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
There was none of that white sleek skin and shimmering play of sinew which made Wilson a beautiful picture, but in its stead there was a rugged grandeur of knotted and tangled muscle, as though the roots of some old tree were writhing from breast to shoulder, and from shoulder to elbow.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
We saw it in all its grandeur, perched a thousand feet on the summit of a sheer precipice, and with seemingly a great gap between it and the steep of the adjacent mountain on any side.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
A form of schizophrenia characterized by delusions (of persecution or grandeur or jealousy); symptoms may include anger and anxiety and aloofness and doubts about gender identity; unlike other types of schizophrenia the patients are usually presentable and (if delusions are not acted on) may function in an apparently normal manner.
(Paraphrenia, NCI Thesaurus)
Among admirals, large enough; but, with an air of grandeur, we know very little of the inferior ranks.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
A heroine in a hack post-chaise is such a blow upon sentiment, as no attempt at grandeur or pathos can withstand.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
They went to the sands, to watch the flowing of the tide, which a fine south-easterly breeze was bringing in with all the grandeur which so flat a shore admitted.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
And there, beneath that farthest hill, which rises with such grandeur, is our cottage.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
