belted earl
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English[edit]
Noun[edit]
belted earl (plural belted earls)
- An earl whose title goes back to the period prior to the 18th century when a sword and belt received from the monarch were tokens of that title.
- 1728, Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, The History of Scotland from 1436 to 1565[1], Glasgow, published 1749, page 14:
- This William was the sixth belted earl of that house of Douglas.
- 1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 2, in Anne of Green Gables[2]:
- It was pretty interesting to imagine things about them—to imagine that perhaps the girl who sat next to you was really the daughter of a belted earl, who had been stolen away from her parents in her infancy by a cruel nurse who died before she could confess.
- 1945, Sinclair Lewis, Cass Timberlane: A Novel of Husbands and Wives[3], Chapter:
- It was Boone Havock and his immense and parrot-squawking wife Queenie who were the great people, the belted earl and terraced countess, of the occasion […]