What's the difference between aristocracy and patriciate?

Aristocracy

Definition:

(n.) Government by the best citizens.
(n.) A ruling body composed of the best citizens.
(n.) A form a government, in which the supreme power is vested in the principal persons of a state, or in a privileged order; an oligarchy.
(n.) The nobles or chief persons in a state; a privileged class or patrician order; (in a popular use) those who are regarded as superior to the rest of the community, as in rank, fortune, or intellect.

Example Sentences:

(1) But now people are thinking about the public school elites, aristocracy, City of London investment bankers, corporate lobbyists, and the imperialist warmongers, apologists and conspirators in the media, not as instruments of good government and a healthy democracy, but as dangerous impediments to it.
(2) In contrast to other European countries, Britain's aristocracy also managed to avoid obliteration by adapting and assimilating.
(3) They include some of her greatest artists, scientists, industrialists and statesmen and stateswomen; most of her older aristocracy; and her present Queen.
(4) You couldn’t go home because your head was buzzing”: It was in the Flying Squad that Malton was first to come across those members of the underworld's aristocracy.
(5) Estate agents report that the top end of the market is booming, and there is no greater sign of the desirability of a stately home - authentically historic or imitation - than in Britain's new aristocracy: footballers.
(6) I sympathise a little with Hunt – he was born into military aristocracy, a cousin of the Queen, went to Charterhouse, then Oxford, then into PR: trying to get him to understand the life of an overworked student nurse is like trying to get an Amazonian tree frog to understand the plot of Blade Runner.
(7) It threatened to sweep away the privileges of an inward looking aristocracy convinced that their glory days would never end.
(8) I was surprised to find how widespread the belief in ghosts was among the aristocracy.
(9) And he despised them because he saw them as entrenching the prestige and status of the aristocracy.” Caligula wanted to rule as an autocrat and he was contemptuous of the pretence that the senate had any power at all.
(10) "All of this behaviour supporting the aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades.
(11) Eugenie Bouchard, the Canadian rising fast through the aristocracy of women’s tennis, swept aside the German Angelique Kerber on Wednesday to book her place in the Wimbledon semi-finals.
(12) To begin with, not all "sherpas" are Sherpas – porters from other parts of Nepal now do a lot of the heavy lifting, leaving Sherpas as a labour aristocracy of mountain guides.
(13) These great families formed what Annan called an "intellectual aristocracy", who bequeathed to their descendants not money or titles, but rather "some trait of personality, some tradition of behaviour, which did not perish with the passing of the years".
(14) There is a history of Britain that is about empire, aristocracy, monarchy, the established church, exploitative employers, and so on.
(15) We want to ask him about his three ex-wives, the future of the aristocracy, and whether he has days where he'd like to throw his titles in the dam and bog off to live with the Chacma baboons of Mozambique.
(16) Huxley was a child of England's intellectual aristocracy.
(17) Kate Middleton might just about be construed into an example of upward social mobility from the affluent middle classes into the aristocracy.
(18) In its turn, this raunchy and rebellious interpretation came under attack in the 1980s for disregarding the forces of the conservative establishment, underestimating the still formidable power of monarchy, aristocracy and Church of England.
(19) Such families worked their way into the aristocracy, courted royalty and found themselves and their descendants partly eroded by economic pressures and personal tragedies in the second half of the 20th century.
(20) He graduated in 1897 and was, in turn, a country general practitioner, the principal medical officer of an overcrowded plague-ship bringing home soldiers from the Boer War, senior surgeon of St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne then, in London, surgeon-in-chief of his own hospital converted to the 'Hospital for Wounded Officers' with promotion to the ranks of brigadier-general and rear-admiral, then knighted and, finally, a consultant surgeon with private hospitals in Park Lane and in Cannes, and with patients largely drawn from the aristocracy, the rich and the famous.