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EMINENT
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Of imposing height; especially standing out above others
Example:
towering icebergs
Synonyms:
eminent; lofty; soaring; towering
Classified under:
Similar:
high ((literal meaning) being at or having a relatively great or specific elevation or upward extension (sometimes used in combinations like 'knee-high'))
Sense 2
Meaning:
Standing above others in quality or position
Example:
eminent members of the community
Synonyms:
eminent; high
Classified under:
Similar:
superior (of or characteristic of high rank or importance)
Derivation:
eminence (high status importance owing to marked superiority)
Context examples:
I have already some acquaintance with the law—as a defendant on civil process—and I shall immediately apply myself to the Commentaries of one of the most eminent and remarkable of our English jurists.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, eminent services; of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employments persons qualified to exercise them, with many other wild, impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational, which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Let it be, in justice, merely said of me, as of a gallant and eminent naval Hero, with whom I have no pretensions to cope, that what I have done, I did, in despite of mercenary and selfish objects, Much affected, but still intensely enjoying himself, Mr. Micawber folded up his letter, and handed it with a bow to my aunt, as something she might like to keep.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
He sent me to Emanuel College in Cambridge at fourteen years old, where I resided three years, and applied myself close to my studies; but the charge of maintaining me, although I had a very scanty allowance, being too great for a narrow fortune, I was bound apprentice to Mr. James Bates, an eminent surgeon in London, with whom I continued four years.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
But there was no vacancy for a tenor in the venerable Pile for which this city is so justly eminent; and he has—in short, he has contracted a habit of singing in public-houses, rather than in sacred edifices.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
It was now day-light, and I returned to my house without waiting to congratulate with the emperor: because, although I had done a very eminent piece of service, yet I could not tell how his majesty might resent the manner by which I had performed it: for, by the fundamental laws of the realm, it is capital in any person, of what quality soever, to make water within the precincts of the palace.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
He had performed many eminent services for the crown, had great natural and acquired parts, adorned with integrity and honour; but so ill an ear for music, that his detractors reported, he had been often known to beat time in the wrong place; neither could his tutors, without extreme difficulty, teach him to demonstrate the most easy proposition in the mathematics.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
