second estate

1. 1.

   the nobility in France and the peerage in Britain

   SynonymsLords Temporal

   Broaderestate of the realm

   United Kingdom · France

Questions about second estate

What does second estate mean?

second estate means "the nobility in France and the peerage in Britain".

What is another word for second estate?

Close synonyms include Lords Temporal. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is second estate a common word?

second estate is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.