wellborn

[ wel-bawrn ]

adjective

1. born of a noble or highly esteemed family.

noun

, (used with a plural verb)

1. wellborn persons collectively:

   the pride and assurance of the wellborn.

Word History and Origins

Origin of wellborn¹

First recorded before 950; Middle English; Old English welboren; well ¹, born

Example Sentences

According to psychologists at the time, it was household workers who tended to introduce perversion into respectable homes, corrupting wellborn individuals like Ann.

From Salon

An aristocracy was unavoidable; the United States would be ruled by the rich, the wellborn and the able.

From Salon

Elizabeth Tilton, a wellborn and influential suffragist and Prohibitionist, was particularly concerned about the price that alcoholism exacted from poor immigrants, who “thought little but acted rashly.”

From The New Yorker

Millions loved watching the nerdy Herb Stempel and the wellborn Charles Van Doren sweat in the “isolation booth.”

From MSNBC

Virginia Hall, a wellborn, multilingual Marylander who became known to the Nazis as the Limping Lady because of her artificial leg, helped French Resistance fighters wage guerrilla warfare against the occupying Germans.

From Washington Post

Related Words

• aristocratic