What's the difference between aristocracy and peerage?

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.

Peerage


Definition:

  • (n.) The rank or dignity of a peer.
  • (n.) The body of peers; the nobility, collectively.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Ashcroft's decision to become a UK resident for tax purposes comes 10 years after first apparently agreeing to do so in order to fulfil the conditions of taking his peerage.
  • (2) Hague was also facing further questions about his role in securing a peerage for Ashcroft.
  • (3) His life peerage was awarded by former Conservative prime minister John Major but his allegiance has always been to the Labour party.
  • (4) If peerages are in effect being sold, the academics argue, “these could be thought of as the ‘average price’ per party.” Former Liberal Democrat peer, Matthew Oakeshott, who on leaving the Lords in May last year lamented that his efforts to uncover cash-for-honours deals across the parties had failed, told the Observer that the case against the system, and the parties, was now compelling.
  • (5) Mandelson, who was MP for Hartlepool from 1992 to 2004, twice resigned from the cabinet amid scandals in 1998 and 2001, and was granted a peerage by Gordon Brown last year so that he could return to the government after several years as European trade commissioner.
  • (6) The undertaking apparently worked – on 31 March, eight days after signing the letter, his peerage was announced in the spring honours list.
  • (7) The exchanges between the then prime minister, Tony Blair, the then leader of the opposition, William Hague , and the honours scrutiny committee detail how Ashcroft was twice turned down for a peerage, partly because of concerns about his status as a "tax exile".
  • (8) In 1963, when Tony Benn won his fight to renounce his inherited peerage, he was rapidly followed by Quintin Hogg and Alec Douglas-Home, who were prominent in the Lords but understood they needed to face the people to get to the very top, as Douglas-Home went on to do.
  • (9) A week later his peerage was announced and an agreement that Ashcroft need only be a "long-term resident" was apparently struck between a senior civil servant and a Tory whip.
  • (10) If the peerage is suddenly opened up to placemen, who hope for later preferment in elective politics, then we could soon have more legislators who are not only unelected, but also the opposite of independent.
  • (11) Business leaders worried about what this would do to our international reputation, what it said about our consistency, whether or not it made the peerage system look like a political plaything.
  • (12) Lord Wei of Shoreditch, who was given a Tory peerage last year and a desk in the Cabinet Office as the "big society tsar", is to reduce his hours on the project from three days a week to two, to allow him to see his family more and to take on other jobs to pay the bills.
  • (13) The Ashcroft letters: how tax promise was key to Tory donor's peerage
  • (14) I don’t want a peerage, and I don’t want a job in government.” Davis calls himself an “eclectic” politician.
  • (15) William Hague was said to be aware 10 years ago of a deal struck by senior Tories that eventually resulted in Lord Ashcroft secretly remaining a non-dom after obtaining his peerage, according to official documents released today.
  • (16) In the event, he was awarded the first hereditary peerage since the Macmillan years, and became leader of the Lords as well as deputy PM.
  • (17) The then Sir Anthony Bamford was granted a peerage in 2013.
  • (18) The list of media figures also includes Patience Wheatcroft, the editor of Wall Street Journal Europe, who has said today that she intends to stand down from the newspaper as a result of taking up the peerage.
  • (19) He said he was going to say nothing about us doing away with the hereditary peerage.
  • (20) Lord Mandelson said today he had no "present plan" to return to the Commons amid speculation that he intends to take advantage of legislation that allows peers to renounce their peerage.