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What is "privileged"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
privileged
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a privileged position
▪ The public expects the Royal Family to earn its privileged position.
a privileged upbringing (=when someone has advantages because their family is wealthy)
▪ Due to his privileged upbringing, he finds it difficult to identify with ordinary people.
a privileged/wealthy background
▪ All the top jobs were taken by people from privileged backgrounds.
the privileged class (=people with advantages because of their wealth, social position etc)
▪ Holidays abroad used to be only for the rich and privileged classes.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
access
▪ Most trainees enjoy privileged access to top executives.
background
▪ In addition a doctor mentioned the advantage of his privileged background and several people indicated that they came from medical families.
class
▪ Control of kinship linkages lies at the heart of privileged class reproduction.
position
▪ Modern surveys have revealed the extent to which the public expects the Royal Family to earn its privileged position.
▪ Can they reach point B, thereby preserving their privileged position as insiders?
▪ Men are in a very privileged position.
▪ The Corinthians are not in the privileged position of judges between theological niceties.
▪ For most students education in the universities and professional and technical colleges promised access to a relatively privileged position in society.
▪ Of these five children two others also gave up their privileged positions in society to promote a new order.
▪ The privileged position of the nobility seemed threatened, too, by the growing professionalization of the bureaucracy and the army.
▪ Ministers were as anxious as their predecessors to preserve Britain's privileged position in the Western alliance.
status
▪ The settlers were determined to retain their privileged status.
▪ Their old privileged status is gone.
▪ They had no specially privileged status.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
the (privileged/chosen) few
▪ A decade ago this was Checkpoint Charlie, one of the few gaps in an otherwise impenetrable barrier a hundred miles long.
▪ But then Jeffries said that that article was one of the few that had examined his ideas on the merits.
▪ Date palms are one of the few fruit trees that can be safely transplanted at full maturity.
▪ Hundreds of people could be seen walking along the roadside or waiting patiently for the few overcrowded buses.
▪ I had underlined the few shady connections which made it into the open.
▪ Stirling sensibly argued that it was illogical to form two new battalions when the few men he required were being denied him.
▪ The major drawback for all immigrant firms has been the difficulty in recruiting the few highly skilled key workers essential to production.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a member of the privileged class
▪ In many countries today only a privileged minority get the chance of going to university.
▪ Taylor enjoyed privileged access to the presidential files.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ As for the army, it is a proud and privileged, secretive and insulated institution.
▪ I really enjoyed our conversations and feel privileged to have shared their very personal experiences.
▪ It was an ancient, historic weapon that d'Arquebus had been privileged to handle.
▪ Ministers were as anxious as their predecessors to preserve Britain's privileged position in the Western alliance.
▪ Nizan occupied a privileged position in Sartre's life both intellectually and emotionally.
▪ Their old privileged status is gone.
▪ There were a number of such privileged gatehouse stations to the aristocracy.
▪ Thus even for the privileged few the length of time during which they can enjoy their peak earnings is being restricted.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Privileged

Privilege \Priv"i*lege\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Privileged; p. pr. & vb. n. Privileging.] [Cf. F. privil['e]gier.]

  1. To grant some particular right or exemption to; to invest with a peculiar right or immunity; to authorize; as, to privilege representatives from arrest.

    To privilege dishonor in thy name.
    --Shak.

  2. To bring or put into a condition of privilege or exemption from evil or danger; to exempt; to deliver.

    He took this place for sanctuary, And it shall privilege him from your hands.
    --Shak.

Privileged

Privileged \Priv"i*leged\, a. Invested with a privilege; enjoying a peculiar right, advantage, or immunity. Privileged communication. (Law)

  1. A communication which can not be disclosed without the consent of the party making it, -- such as those made by a client to his legal adviser, or by persons to their religious or medical advisers.

  2. A communication which does not expose the party making it to indictment for libel, -- such as those made by persons communicating confidentially with a government, persons consulted confidentially as to the character of servants, etc.

    Privileged debts (Law), those to which a preference in payment is given out of the estate of a deceased person, or out of the estate of an insolvent.
    --Wharton.
    --Burrill.

    Privileged witnesses (Law) witnesses who are not obliged to testify as to certain things, as lawyers in relation to their dealings with their clients, and officers of state as to state secrets; also, by statute, clergymen and physicans are placed in the same category, so far as concerns information received by them professionally.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
privileged

late 14c. of things; mid-15c. of persons, past participle adjective from privilege (v.).

Wiktionary
privileged

  1. 1 Having special privileges. 2 (context legal English) Not subject to legal discovery due to a protected status. v

  2. (en-past of: privilege)

Related phrases:
WordNet
privileged

  1. adj. blessed with privileges; "the privileged few" [ant: underprivileged]

  2. not subject to usual rules or penalties; "a privileged statement"

  3. confined to an exclusive group; "privy to inner knowledge"; "inside information"; "privileged information" [syn: inside, inner]

Wikipedia
Privileged (1982 film)

Privileged is a 1982 film notable for being the first theatrical release from the Oxford Film Foundation and the screen debut of Hugh Grant. Directed by Michael Hoffman with John Schlesinger, produced by Rick Stevenson and Mark Bentley, the film is about a group of Oxford student partygoers, with elements of a whodunit.

The classical score is by Rachel Portman in her film debut at the age of 22, and the film also uses dance tracks by Oxford student band "Kudos Points" whose members included Charlie Mole (who went on to compose film scores in his own right). Privileged was also the first major screen debut for Imogen Stubbs, Mark Williams and James Wilby.

The screenplay includes a play within a play as several of the characters are vying for a role in a student production of The Duchess of Malfi.

Privileged (TV series)

Privileged is an American television comedy-drama that premiered on The CW in the United States and City in Canada on September 9, 2008. The series stars JoAnna Garcia and is based on the Alloy Entertainment book How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls by Zoey Dean. The series was originally to share the same name as the book, but the name was announced at the upfronts as Surviving the Filthy Rich and later changed again to Privileged on June 24, 2008. It was produced by Alloy Entertainment in association with Warner Bros. Television and CBS Paramount Network Television with executive producers Rina Mimoun, Bob Levy and Leslie Morgenstein. Michael Engler directed the pilot.

On May 19, 2009, it was announced that The CW would not be renewing the series for a second season.

Usage examples of "privileged".

THE CLEAREST INDICATION that the search for an unmerited privileged position for humans will never be wholly abandoned is what in physics and astronomy is called the Anthropic Principle.

They had failed to anticipate the radical fervor with which an entire stratum of privileged intellectuals would attempt to propel the American revolution beyond the boundaries of bourgeois democracy.

The fact that there is no one metaphysically privileged description of the universe does not mean that the universe depends on our minds.

So guided tours of the privileged few to examine the Jami-san cleansing room became one of the most sought-after sights of gai-jin Yokohama, the chattering musume like so many exotic birds, bowing and sucking in their breaths and pulling the chain to gasps of wonder and applause.

Trennick, too, stared open-mouthed, for he had never been privileged to look at the Neutralizer before.

She had insinuated that she could pull rank, could have Reiche Planchette arbitrate differences, that she was in a privileged position that made Marilena feel like a mere means to an end.

Visitors held a plenary session in a spaceship off Morocco, which I was privileged to attend.

I have been privileged to become aware of the singing of a quiet tune, some of the phrases of which were directly derivative from inarticulate vegetation--the thud of glossy blue quandongs on the soft floor of the jungle, the clicking of a discarded leaf as it fell from topmost twigs down through the strata of foliage, the bursting of a seed-pod, the patter of rejects from the million pink-fruited fig, overhanging the beach, the whisper of leaves, the faint squeal where interlocked branches fret each other unceasingly, the sigh of phantom zephyrs too elusive to be felt.

This was the comparatively privileged position of recusant women under the law.

There was a quiet, understated sense of menace in their unwavering self-possession, as though no one and nothing in the world could ever disturb their privileged world.

The more desperately the crown sought remedies for its financial plight in taxes imposed on privileged and unprivileged alike, the more infuriated the Parlements became.

Probably those who were privileged to witness his landing decided that he was either an acrobat casually practising a back flip or a slightly stout and unsober god arriving in haste from some well-tailored Olympus.

THEY only do not deem themselves privileged to address the Deity in strains of crude and unweighed importunity.

While we have such things to answer for, our withers are surely not unwrung, and in the interests of science, if not from other motives, we have a right to decide who shall be privileged to do them.

Its members are those house-holders who have been privileged to have Anzac soldiers billeted on them.