| / English Dictionary |
PRIVILEGED
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Confined to an exclusive group
Example:
privileged information
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Similar:
exclusive (excluding much or all; especially all but a particular group or minority)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Blessed with privileges
Example:
the privileged few
Classified under:
Similar:
sweetheart (privileged treatment of a favored person or corporation (sometimes unethically))
Also:
fortunate (having unexpected good fortune)
rich (possessing material wealth)
Antonym:
underprivileged (lacking the rights and advantages of other members of society)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Not subject to usual rules or penalties
Example:
a privileged statement
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
exempt ((of persons) freed from or not subject to an obligation or liability (as e.g. taxes) to which others or other things are subject)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Past simple / past participle of the verb privilege
Context examples:
"Why can she not influence him more, when she is privileged to draw so near to him?" I asked myself.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
It is a sort of thing, cried Mrs. Elton emphatically, which I should not have thought myself privileged to inquire into.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
The proposed tea-drinkings being quite impracticable, I compounded with Miss Lavinia for permission to visit every Saturday afternoon, without detriment to my privileged Sundays.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
We have been privileged to overhear a prehistoric tragedy, the sort of drama which occurred among the reeds upon the border of some Jurassic lagoon, when the greater dragon pinned the lesser among the slime, said Challenger, with more solemnity than I had ever heard in his voice.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Her mother's ungraciousness, made the sense of what they owed him more painful to Elizabeth's mind; and she would, at times, have given anything to be privileged to tell him that his kindness was neither unknown nor unfelt by the whole of the family.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
The wondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas's prison; it had opened the doors of the soul's cell and loosed its bands—it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous body.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
As my mother stooped down on the threshold to take me in her arms and kiss me, the gentleman said I was a more highly privileged little fellow than a monarch—or something like that; for my later understanding comes, I am sensible, to my aid here.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Peggotty had considered herself highly privileged in being allowed to participate in these labours; and, although she still retained something of her old sentiment of awe in reference to my aunt, had received so many marks of encouragement and confidence, that they were the best friends possible.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
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