vavasor


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vav·a·sor

also vav·a·sour  (văv′ə-sôr′, -so͝or′)
n.
A feudal tenant who ranked directly below a baron or peer.
[Middle English vavasour, from Old French, from Medieval Latin vavassor, possibly contraction of vassus vassōrum, vassal of vassals : vassus, vassal (from Vulgar Latin *vassus; see vassal) + vassōrum, genitive pl. of vassus, vassal.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

vavasor

,

vavassor

or

vavasour

n
1. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) (in feudal society) the noble or knightly vassal of a baron or great lord who also has vassals himself
2. (Historical Terms) (in feudal society) the noble or knightly vassal of a baron or great lord who also has vassals himself
[C13: from Old French vavasour, perhaps contraction of Medieval Latin vassus vassōrum vassal of vassals; see vassal]
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

vav•a•sor

(ˈvæv əˌsɔr, -ˌsoʊr)

n.
a feudal vassal ranking just below a baron.
[1300–50; Middle English vavasour < Old French, perhaps contraction of Medieval Latin vassusvassōrum vassal of vassals; see vassal]
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive ?
Led by fiery figures such as Vavasor Powell and Thomas Harrison, the Fifth Monarchists were the radical faction of an already radical Parliament.
"Then shall be their day:" The Eschatology of the General Baptist Standard Confession of 1660
A'r rhyfel ar y gorwel, mae Rhisiart yn cael ei dynnu i ganol y brwydrau chwerw, dan ddylanwad Walter Cradoc a Vavasor Powell.
Y SILFF LYFRAU; Y FRO DYWYLL Jerry Hunter (Y Lolfa, PS9.95)
Thus Alice Vavasor in Trollope's Can You Forgive Her?
Masculine identification and marital dissolution in Aurora Leigh
What follows is a complex set of attractions: Calogrenant's for his vavasor host's daughter and the vavasor's for Calogrenant.
Male same-sex desire in the romances of de Troyes
Female and male worlds overlapped and reinforced one another, so that Kate Vavasor in Anthony Trollope's Can You Forgive Her?
Friendship and lesbian studies
Golightly (The Three Clerks), Mary Thorne (Doctor Thorne), Miss Dunstable (Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, The Small House at Allington), Miss Mackenzie (Miss Mackenzie), Alice Vavasor and Mrs.
Frank must marry money: men, women, and property in Trollope's novels
In fact, Trollope usually backs up his strong-willed female characters such as Lady Laura in Phineas Finn (1869) or Alice Vavasor in Can You Forgive Her?
Trollope's Material Girl
Through words or through silence, Maggie Tulliver, Mr Rochester, Adam Bede, Clara Middleton, Alice Vavasor, Merton Densher, and Kate Croy all make promises that they breach, but they do so because the promise is a performative as well as a linguistic act, one that alters social relationships, imposing upon, and encouraging self-reflection by, those who embark upon it.
Promising Language: Betrothal in Victorian Law and Fiction
One could almost say that the left half corresponds to the idealization of nature by art, as advocated by Sir Joshua Reynolds in his Discourses (and, by extension, Baudelaire's transformation of mud into gold), whereas the right half expresses "the infiltration of chance into human purpose." Trotter's excellent book abounds with examples and counter-examples, ranging from the determinism of Naturalism to the development of the aleatory, in such figures as the stockbroker, George Vavasor, in Anthony Trollope's Can You Forgive Her?
Cooking with Mud: The Idea of Mess in Nineteenth-Century Art and Fiction. (Reviews)
King's essay which links - not in that convincing a way - the 'discourse' of the Langham Place feminists with the succumbing to male power of Alice Vavasor and Glencora Palliser.
Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 21, 1993
Her most famous series of revelations came while she waited outside the trial of the radical Parliamentary Army Chaplain and itinerant millenarian preacher Vavasor Powell (1617-70) at Whitehall in January 1654.
Diggers, Ranters, and women prophets: the discourse of madness and the Cartesian 'cogito' in seventeenth-century England

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