ELITE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does elite mean? 

• ELITE (noun)
  The noun ELITE has 1 sense:

1. a group or class of persons enjoying superior intellectual or social or economic status

  Familiarity information: ELITE used as a noun is very rare.

• ELITE (adjective)
  The adjective ELITE has 1 sense:

1. selected as the best

  Familiarity information: ELITE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ELITE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A group or class of persons enjoying superior intellectual or social or economic status

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

elite; elite group

Hypernyms ("elite" is a kind of...):

upper class; upper crust (the class occupying the highest position in the social hierarchy)

Meronyms (members of "elite"):

technocrat (an expert who is a member of a highly skilled elite group)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "elite"):

chosen; elect (an exclusive group of people)

cream; pick (the best people or things in a group)

clerisy; intelligentsia (an educated and intellectual elite)

beau monde; bon ton; high society; smart set; society (the fashionable elite)

few (a small elite group)

aristocracy; nobility (a privileged class holding hereditary titles)

Derivation:

elite (selected as the best)

• ELITE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Selected as the best

Synonyms:

elect; elite

Context example:

elite colleges

Similar:

selected (chosen in preference to another)

Derivation:

elite (a group or class of persons enjoying superior intellectual or social or economic status)

 Context examples 

People in the Sonoran Desert and Tonto Basin, in what is today Arizona, were more culturally advanced, with irrigation, ball courts, and eventually elevated platform mounds and compounds housing elite families.

(Scientists chart a baby boom in southwestern Native Americans from 500 to 1300 A.D., NSF)