| / English Dictionary |
GUARDIAN
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A person who cares for persons or property
Synonyms:
defender; guardian; protector; shielder
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("guardian" is a kind of...):
preserver (someone who keeps safe from harm or danger)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "guardian"):
admonisher; monitor; reminder (someone who gives a warning so that a mistake can be avoided)
bodyguard; escort (someone who escorts and protects a prominent person)
champion; fighter; hero; paladin (someone who fights for a cause)
chaperon; chaperone (one who accompanies and supervises a young woman or gatherings of young people)
custodian; keeper; steward (one having charge of buildings or grounds or animals)
fire-eater; fire fighter; firefighter; fireman (a member of a fire department who tries to extinguish fires)
foster-parent; foster parent (a person who acts as parent and guardian for a child in place of the child's natural parents but without legally adopting the child)
guard (a person who keeps watch over something or someone)
keeper (someone in charge of other people)
law officer; lawman; peace officer (an officer of the law)
patron saint (a saint who is considered to be a defender of some group or nation)
peacekeeper (someone who keeps peace)
tribune ((ancient Rome) an official elected by the plebeians to protect their interests)
watchdog (a guardian or defender against theft or illegal practices or waste)
Derivation:
guardianship (the responsibility of a guardian or keeper)
guardianship (attention and management implying responsibility for safety)
Context examples:
For some time back Mawson & Williams, the famous financial house, have been the guardians of securities which amount in the aggregate to a sum of considerably over a million sterling.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Formal consent to enter the trial comes from the parent or guardian.
(Assent process, NCI Dictionary)
The actual official guardian of the papers is the famous government expert, Sir James Walter, whose decorations and sub-titles fill two lines of a book of reference.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
If you are under age 18, your parent or guardian must give you permission to become a donor.
(Organ Donation, Health Resources and Services Administration)
I thought I had best meet him on his own ground, so I said:—"Your clients, sir, are happy in having so resolute a guardian of their confidence. I am myself a professional man." Here I handed him my card.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Still, however, Fanny was oppressed and wearied; he saw it in her looks, it could not be talked away; and attempting it no more, he led her directly, with the kind authority of a privileged guardian, into the house.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Ah, Jo, instead of wishing that, thank God that 'Father and Mother were particular', and pity from your heart those who have no such guardians to hedge them round with principles which may seem like prison walls to impatient youth, but which will prove sure foundations to build character upon in womanhood.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
When the girls are twelve years old, which among them is the marriageable age, their parents or guardians take them home, with great expressions of gratitude to the professors, and seldom without tears of the young lady and her companions.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Thus, the pair of lovers could be jarred apart by misunderstood motives, by accident of fate, by jealous rivals, by irate parents, by crafty guardians, by scheming relatives, and so forth and so forth; they could be reunited by a brave deed of the man lover, by a similar deed of the woman lover, by change of heart in one lover or the other, by forced confession of crafty guardian, scheming relative, or jealous rival, by voluntary confession of same, by discovery of some unguessed secret, by lover storming girl's heart, by lover making long and noble self-sacrifice, and so on, endlessly.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Did any one, be it East End rough or West End patrician, intrude within the outer ropes, this corp of guardians neither argued nor expostulated, but they fell upon the offender and laced him with their whips until he escaped back out of the forbidden ground.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
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