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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
principality
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But confronting the principalities of darkness which foster this insidious violence has meant experiencing spiritual warfare as never before.
▪ Little by little there emerged minute royal principalities, then aristocratic towns, linked together by trade.
▪ The principality has the highest proportion of homes built more than 100 years ago.
▪ The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia saw its dismemberment and division into more than 300 individual and sovereign states and principalities.
▪ The new bureaucrats may well have been willing to learn lessons from their fellows across the boundaries of principalities.
▪ The Prussian crown and several smaller principalities which seized the properties told the churches to raise money from their own members instead.
▪ These two incidents hardly added up to a minimal knowledge of the principality.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Principality

Principality \Prin`ci*pal"i*ty\, n.; pl. Principalities. [L. principalitas pre["e]minence, excellence: cf. F. principalit['e], principaut['e]. See Principal.]

  1. Sovereignty; supreme power; hence, superiority; predominance; high, or the highest, station.
    --Sir P. Sidney.

    Your principalities shall come down, even the crown of your glory.
    --Jer. xiii. 18.

    The prerogative and principality above everything else.
    --Jer. Taylor.

  2. A prince; one invested with sovereignty. ``Next upstood Nisroch, of principalities the prime.''
    --Milton.

  3. The territory or jurisdiction of a prince; or the country which gives title to a prince; as, the principality of Wales.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
principality

c.1300, "position of a prince," from Old French principalite "principal matter; power, sovereignty" (12c., Modern French principauté), from Late Latin principalitatem (nominative principalitas), from principalis (see principal (adj.)). Meaning "region or state ruled by a prince" is attested from c.1400.

Wiktionary
principality

n. 1 (context obsolete English) The state of being a prince or ruler; sovereignty, absolute authority. (14th-19th c.) 2 (context now rare English) The state of being principal; pre-eminence. (from 14th c.) 3 A region or sovereign nation headed by a prince or princess. (from 14th c.) 4 (context theology English) A spiritual being, specifically in Christian angelology, the fifth level of angels, ranked above powers and below dominions. (from 16th c.)

WordNet
principality

n. territory ruled by a prince [syn: princedom]

Wikipedia
Principality

A principality (or princedom) can either be a monarchical feudatory or a sovereign state, ruled or reigned over by a monarch with the title of prince or by a monarch with another title within the generic use of the term prince.

Principality (disambiguation)

A principality is a monarchical feudatory or sovereign state, ruled or reigned over by a monarch with the title of prince or princess.

Principality may also refer to:

  • Principality (angel), an order in the Christian angelic hierarchy
  • Principality Building Society, a financial services company

Usage examples of "principality".

Such was the promising state of my prospects when my evil genius brought to Madrid a native of Liege, Baron de Fraiture, chief huntsman of the principality, and a profligate, a gamester, and a cheat, like all those who proclaim their belief in his honesty nowadays.

Prussians, not being strong enough to defend the town, the soldiers mutinied against their officers, whereupon a capitulation was agreed on, and the gates were opened to the French commander, who made his troops enter with a great deal of order, assured the magistrates that care should be taken to make them observe a good discipline, and published two ordinances, one for the security of the religion and commerce of the city, and the other for prohibiting the exportation of corn and forage out of that principality.

Henry, being mesne lord and also natural guardian to his son and daughter-in-law, put himself in possession of that principality, and annexed it for the present to his other great dominions.

Many days behind him and to the southeast lay the independent principality of Rader, once the northmost province of the old Serranthonian Empire, but now broken away in the collapse of the Empire which had followed the extinction of the line of Halbros-Serrantho.

He faced his financial embarrassments with characteristic pluck, but it was a dark hour in the annals of British finance far beyond the boundaries of the Principality, amidst which came the sensational failure of the Overend and Gurney Bank, and, so far as the Welsh Coast Railway in particular was concerned, the interminable legal wrangles not only cost money, but postponed the hour at which the line could earn its keep.

Has not authentic history clearly revealed in the case of these nations the painful yet inevitable merging of rival, particularistic and independent cities and principalities into one unified national entity, the evolving of a crude and narrow creed into a nobler and wider conception?

But this new order of things--a ranch bounded only by the horizons, where, as far as one could see, to the north, to the east, to the south and to the west, was all one holding, a principality ruled with iron and steam, bullied into a yield of three hundred and fifty thousand bushels, where even when the land was resting, unploughed, unharrowed, and unsown, the wheat came up--troubled her, and even at times filled her with an undefinable terror.

Germany, capital of the principality of Schaumburg-Lippe, pleasantly situated at the foot of the Harrelberg on the river Aue, 6 m.

But for himself, now heir to the principality of Vaufontaine, and therefrom, by reversion, to that of Bercy, it had no importance.

At the same instant Muda Saffir with fifty of his head-hunting Dyaks emerged from the jungle east of the camp, bent on discovering the whereabouts of the girl the Malay sought and bearing her away to his savage court far within the jungle fastness of his Bornean principality.

This was more especially the case as regarded the Danubian Principalities.

Emperor of Russia, two princes, who had been justly banished from the possessions of the Sultan, had been placed at the head of the government of the Danubian principalities, so that Moldavia and Wallachia were at present nothing else than Russian provinces.

A branch of the ancient Guelphic House reigned at Hanover, and had succeeded by politic and constant effort in consolidating half a dozen territories into one important principality.

The decline of the Mogul empire gave free play to the turbulent spirit of the Jats and Gujars, many of whose chieftains succeeded in carving out petty principalities for themselves at the expense of their neighbours.

Parma was defeated with the use of antimatter weapons, its remaining industrial stations being confiscated in reparation, and Jerez became a principality awarded to Cheloe herself.