archleader

English

Alternative forms

• arch-leader

Etymology

From arch- +‎ leader.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɑɹt͡ʃˈliː.dɚ/
• (US, Canada) IPA^(key): /ɑɹt͡ʃˈlidɚ/

Noun

archleader (plural archleaders)

1. (rare) The foremost leader.
   • 1821, The North American Review‎^[1], O. Everett, page 253:

     It was his influence that probed the Casale trial to its depths of infamy, that insisted on the Mafia and its archleader, Palizzolo, being brought to justice. To him and his energy and inflexible sense of duty it is largely due that reform is no longer in the air, but on the statute-book, that a beginning is being made towards an impartial administration of the laws.

   • 1864, Charles Kent, Footprints on the Road‎^[2], Chapman and Hall, page 344:

     Arrived in London, Tom Moore very soon indeed became the favourite of the fashionables, and the pet of the pettieoate. It mattered little in his instance, even in those preposterous days when H. K, H. George Prince of Wales was the example and the archleader of that old-world Snobbism Rampant, that the young Irish poet had a father over in Dublin, who was a small shopkeeper.

   • 1869, N.H Claremont, Dedication of a Soldiers' Monument, at Claremont, N. H.‎^[3], Claremont Manufacturing Company, page 23:

     I will only recall to you the words of the archleaders themselves of the great conspiracy, to show that they well knew they were plotting treason against the fairest and best government on the face of the earth, and that, in spite of all their assertions to the contrary, they stand convicted, from out of their own mouths, of a parricidal determination to subvert that government, in order to serve their own selfish ends.