From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishgentrygen‧try /ˈdʒentri/ noun [plural] old-fashioned SSCLASS IN SOCIETYpeople who belong to a high social class a member of the landed gentry (=gentry who own land)
Examples from the Corpus
gentry• The Nottingham bank attracted the business of neighbouring nobility and gentry as well as that of local hosiery manufacturers and traders.• Redmond is Harry Trench, a new doctor and youngest son of landed gentry with a small investment income.• Other local gentry families were less fortunate in overcoming the crisis produced by some of their members.• Minna was with us and the local gentry were kind.• More valuable, and usually more visible, were the regional gentry attracted to the duke's service.• Nor did he have to worry for long about hostility on the part of the gentry.• Nearly two-thirds of the town's 36 property qualifications were owned by a Warwickshire gentry family, the Goughs of Edgbaston.landed gentry• The King appointed them to high offices of state, which the aristocracy and landed gentry considered to be their prerogative.• It was built originally by one of the old wool merchants, who wanted to establish his family as landed gentry.• But it certainly suited the dominant landed gentry to interpret him in that way.• Redmond is Harry Trench, a new doctor and youngest son of landed gentry with a small investment income.• There were twenty-one knights, but these too were more often lawyers, merchants and colonial administrators rather than landed gentry.• Parliament remained dominated by the aristocracy and by the landed gentry.• the landed gentry• The landed gentry planted for their grandchildren avenues of hardwood that they themselves would never see.Origin gentry (1300-1400) Old French genterise, gentelise, from gentil; → GENTLE 