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MAJESTY
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Impressiveness in scale or proportion
Synonyms:
loftiness; majesty; stateliness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("majesty" is a kind of...):
grandness; impressiveness; magnificence; richness (splendid or imposing in size or appearance)
Derivation:
majestic (having or displaying great dignity or nobility)
Context examples:
“His majesty here will doubtless order that you have this dish hotly seasoned when we are all safely in Castile.”
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
This done, I lingered yet a little longer: the flowers smelt so sweet as the dew fell; it was such a pleasant evening, so serene, so warm; the still glowing west promised so fairly another fine day on the morrow; the moon rose with such majesty in the grave east. I was noting these things and enjoying them as a child might, when it entered my mind as it had never done before:—How sad to be lying now on a sick bed, and to be in danger of dying!
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Yet such must be the impression conveyed to you by what appears to be the purport of my actions. Yet I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure; when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
This is an exact inventory of what we found about the body of the man-mountain, who used us with great civility, and due respect to your majesty’s commission.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Hardly had he formed the wish than the marshal began, and said: “Your majesty, we live joyously here, but how is the queen living in the tower? Is she still alive, or has she died?”
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
So, alternately beating and beaten, they made their dolorous way through the beautiful woods and under the amber arches of the fading beech-trees, where the calm strength and majesty of Nature might serve to rebuke the foolish energies and misspent strivings of mankind.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted, was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before me; to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to my left were the muffled windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant majesty of the bed and room.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
His imperial majesty spoke often to me, and I returned answers: but neither of us could understand a syllable.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
His majesty approved of the proposal, and I took them up, one by one, in my hands, ready mounted and armed, with the proper officers to exercise them.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Signed and sealed on the fourth day of the eighty-ninth moon of your majesty’s auspicious reign.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
