Noblesse Definition & Meaning

Origin of Noblesse

From Anglo-Norman noblesse, noblesce et al., Old French noblace, nobleche et al., from noble (“noble").

From Wiktionary
Middle English from Old French from noble noble from Latin nōbilis noble

From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

Sieyês had drawn up at his request, and was elected in three - by the noblesse of Paris, Villers-Cotterets and Crepy-en-Valois.
C. Fox-Davies's Armorial Families (Edinburgh, 1895, and subsequent editions) represents an unhistorical attempt to create the idea of a noblesse in the United Kingdom.
Shortly before returning to his regiment in the early weeks of 1791 he indited a letter inveighing in violent terms against Matteo Buttafuoco, deputy for the Corsican noblesse in the National Assembly of France, as having betrayed the cause of insular liberty in 1768 and as plotting against it again.
In the imperial court, so far as outward decorum and refinement were concerned, there was an immense improvement, and the upper section of the old Russian Dvorianstvo became a noblesse with French aristocratic conceptions and ideals.
The esquires, knights, lesser barons, even the remote descendants of peers, that is, the noblesse of other countries, in England remained gentlemen, but not noblemen - simple commoners, that is, without legal advantage over their fellowcommoners who had no jus imaginum to boast of.

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