Meaning & use
Elizabethan
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Meanings
adjectivebefore a noun
Belonging to the time when Elizabeth I ruled England, from 1558 to 1603, or to its arts, customs, and style.
Grammar: Usually comes before a noun: Elizabethan theater, an Elizabethan manor. It is capitalized.
Patterns
- Elizabethan England
- an Elizabethan house
Shakespeare wrote many plays during the Elizabethan era.
The town still has several half-timbered Elizabethan houses.
Elizabethan sailors explored the Atlantic and beyond.
nouncountable
A person who lived in England during the reign of Elizabeth I, especially a writer or courtier.
Grammar: Often plural: the Elizabethans.
Patterns
- the Elizabethans
The Elizabethans loved elaborate clothing and public theater.
Historians study how the Elizabethans dealt with disease.
Many Elizabethans could not read.
Word forms
| plural | Elizabethans |
|---|
Common combinations
- Elizabethan era
- The Elizabethan era saw a flowering of poetry and drama.
- Elizabethan theater
- Elizabethan theater audiences stood in the open yard.
- Elizabethan England
- Elizabethan England feared invasion from Spain.
- Elizabethan costume
- The actors wore Elizabethan costume with stiff white ruffs.
- Elizabethan manor
- They toured an Elizabethan manor with a great hall.
Synonyms and how they differ
- Tudor
- Tudor covers the whole royal family from 1485 to 1603, while Elizabethan names only the reign of Elizabeth I.
- Renaissance
- Renaissance is a wider European cultural movement, so Elizabethan is the more precise word for England under Elizabeth.
- early modern
- Early modern is a general historians' label for about 1500 to 1800, so it is far broader than Elizabethan.
Word family
- Elizabeth proper noun
- the queen from whom the word is taken
- Jacobean adjective
- relating to the reign of James I that followed
Commonly confused: Elizabethan or Victorian? Elizabethan or Edwardian?
Elizabethan vs Victorian
Victorian relates to Queen Victoria's reign in the 1800s, about three centuries after the Elizabethan era.
Elizabethan vs Edwardian
Edwardian refers to the short reign of Edward VII in the early 1900s, which is unrelated to Elizabeth I.
Practice
Which writer is most closely linked with the Elizabethan era?
Choose one answer.
Shakespeare wrote during Elizabeth I's reign. Dickens and Wilde were Victorian writers and Austen belonged to the early 1800s.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “Elizabethan”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.