REIGNING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does reigning mean? 

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

1. exercising power or authority

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• REIGNING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Exercising power or authority

Synonyms:

regnant; reigning; ruling

Similar:

powerful (having great power or force or potency or effect)

 Context examples 

To my certain knowledge he has acted on behalf of three of the reigning houses of Europe in very vital matters.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The circumstances are of great delicacy, and every precaution has to be taken to quench what might grow to be an immense scandal and seriously compromise one of the reigning families of Europe.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I am not one of those who neglect the reigning power to bow to the rising sun.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

It was a style of beauty, of which elegance was the reigning character, and as such, she must, in honour, by all her principles, admire it:—elegance, which, whether of person or of mind, she saw so little in Highbury.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

For, as to that infamous practice of acquiring great employments by dancing on the ropes, or badges of favour and distinction by leaping over sticks and creeping under them, the reader is to observe, that they were first introduced by the grandfather of the emperor now reigning, and grew to the present height by the gradual increase of party and faction.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It was from the reigning family of Holland, though the matter in which I served them was of such delicacy that I cannot confide it even to you, who have been good enough to chronicle one or two of my little problems.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)