Ruritanian
adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A person from the fictional land of Ruritania.
- 1 Of or having the characteristics of adventure, romance, and intrigue, as in works of romantic fiction.
"These claims were called the Greater Ruritania by the cultivated classes who regarded Kipling, Treitschke, and Maurice Barres as one hundred percent Ruritanian. But the grandiose idea aroused no enthusiasm abroad. So holding this finest flower of the Ruritanian genius, as their poet laureate said, to their hearts, Ruritania's statesmen went forth to divide and conquer."
- 2 Used to describe a fictitious and generic foreign government or person, used to state a general or hypothetical situation.
"In practice, the Ruritanian regime is autocratic, controlling business, government, finance, and military posts."
- 1 of or pertaining to or characteristic of Ruritania (or any other imaginary country) wordnet
Example
More examples"These claims were called the Greater Ruritania by the cultivated classes who regarded Kipling, Treitschke, and Maurice Barres as one hundred percent Ruritanian. But the grandiose idea aroused no enthusiasm abroad. So holding this finest flower of the Ruritanian genius, as their poet laureate said, to their hearts, Ruritania's statesmen went forth to divide and conquer."
Etymology
From Ruritania + -an, after the fictional kingdom used as the setting for stories by Anthony Hope (1863–1933).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.