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PROPRIETOR
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
(law) someone who owns (is legal possessor of) a business
Example:
he is the owner of a chain of restaurants
Synonyms:
owner; proprietor
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("proprietor" is a kind of...):
businessman; man of affairs (a person engaged in commercial or industrial business (especially an owner or executive))
Domain category:
jurisprudence; law (the collection of rules imposed by authority)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "proprietor"):
bookseller (the proprietor of a bookstore)
lease giver; lessor (someone who grants a lease)
letter (owner who lets another person use something (housing usually) for hire)
patron (the proprietor of an inn)
proprietress (a woman proprietor)
newspaper publisher; publisher (the proprietor of a newspaper)
renter (an owner of property who receives payment for its use by another person)
restauranter; restaurateur (the proprietor of a restaurant)
saloon keeper (the proprietor of a saloon)
timberman (an owner or manager of a company that is engaged in lumbering)
Derivation:
proprietary (protected by trademark or patent or copyright; made or produced or distributed by one having exclusive rights)
proprietorship (an unincorporated business owned by a single person who is responsible for its liabilities and entitled to its profits)
Context examples:
In the centre of some of the best preserves in the kingdom, surrounded by three great proprietors, each more careful and jealous than the other; and to two of the three at least, Charles Hayter might get a special recommendation.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
Otherwise, as avarice is the necessary consequence of old age, those immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole nation, and engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to manage, must end in the ruin of the public.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
One of the largest stalls bore the name of Breckinridge upon it, and the proprietor a horsey-looking man, with a sharp face and trim side-whiskers was helping a boy to put up the shutters.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Yes, she said, it is a pretty place; but I fear it will be getting out of order, unless Mr. Rochester should take it into his head to come and reside here permanently; or, at least, visit it rather oftener: great houses and fine grounds require the presence of the proprietor.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
She felt all the honest pride and complacency which her alliance with the present and future proprietor could fairly warrant, as she viewed the respectable size and style of the building, its suitable, becoming, characteristic situation, low and sheltered—its ample gardens stretching down to meadows washed by a stream, of which the Abbey, with all the old neglect of prospect, had scarcely a sight—and its abundance of timber in rows and avenues, which neither fashion nor extravagance had rooted up.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
The rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to the fortune of its proprietor; but Elizabeth saw, with admiration of his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of splendour, and more real elegance, than the furniture of Rosings.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
He said, it was common, when two Yahoos discovered such a stone in a field, and were contending which of them should be the proprietor, a third would take the advantage, and carry it away from them both; which my master would needs contend to have some kind of resemblance with our suits at law; wherein I thought it for our credit not to undeceive him; since the decision he mentioned was much more equitable than many decrees among us; because the plaintiff and defendant there lost nothing beside the stone they contended for: whereas our courts of equity would never have dismissed the cause, while either of them had any thing left.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
The inspector and two men accompanied her back, and in spite of the continued resistance of the proprietor, they made their way to the room in which Mr. St. Clair had last been seen.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Mr. Rochester was Mr. Rochester in her eyes; a gentleman, a landed proprietor—nothing more: she inquired and searched no further, and evidently wondered at my wish to gain a more definite notion of his identity.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Accordingly, when she retired at night, she asked the chambermaid whether Pemberley were not a very fine place? what was the name of its proprietor? and, with no little alarm, whether the family were down for the summer?
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
