the three estates

Questions about the three estates

What does the three estates mean?

the three estates means "a major social class or order of persons regarded collectively as part of the body politic of the country (especially in the United Kingdom) and formerly possessing distinct political rights".

What is another word for the three estates?

Close synonyms include estate of the realm, estate. 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 the three estates a common word?

the three estates 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.