Definition of "grande"
grande1
grande2
noun
plural grandes
Quotations
Console yourself with the practical philosophy of our countryman, Private Curtis, who was the picture of a Spanish Grande of the first class, and whom I once heard after a Lenten dinner extemporize with great good-humour this Leonine distich:—“Quod deficit in ferculis / Supplebitur in poculis!”
1847, T[erence] M[cMahon] Hughes, “Hercules Rafferty.—An Asturianillo.—An Irish stew.—A Bottle-Hero.—Don Tito de Chiclana.—O’Gorman.—Perils of love-making in the Peninsula.” (chapter VI), in An Overland Journey to Lisbon at the Close of 1846; with a Picture of the Actual State of Spain and Portugal, volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], page 89
When we read in almost every book in which the life of Philip is described that he was a man of haughty character with an aversion to every vulgarity; when we read of his ability in courting ladies, his manly beauty, his fine dress as a Spanish grande, we incline to think that before us stands a nobleman of kindred feelings, of carefully fostered nobility.
1912, Tiemen De Vries, Dutch History, Art and Literature for Americans: Lectures Given in the University of Chicago, Eerdmans-Sevensma Company, pages 85–86
With the exception of the vital Otto Woegerer as Juan, a Spanish grande, equally quick to draw his rapier against Hamlet as to appear a mystically presaging friend, the rest of the large cast fills its space with satisfactory competence.
1936 November 17, The New York Times Theater Reviews, pages 15–16
Else, how could it be that a little Miss Mischief dresses up as a homely little Dutch farm girl, an awkward and uncouth youth parades in the costume and with the air of a Spanish grande, the respectable, quiet housewife becomes a sailor’s sweetheart, a little boy flirt assumes the detached air of a high priest a painstaking bookkeeper masquerades as a hold-up man or a bank robber with a record as a policeman?
1952, German Review, page 19
The two plays were originally sketched with a French milieu, but after Voltaire’s revolutionary pamphlet Le Droit du seigneur (1762) it seemed safer to invent a Spanish grande and his castle Aguas Frescas—the more alluring to Beaumarchais as he knew the milieu well from his stay of eleven months in Spain.
1972, Helmut Anthony Hatzfeld, The Rococo: Eroticism, Wit, and Elegance in European Literature (Pegasus Movements in Literature Series), Pegasus, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., page 108
So the attempt to seduce Zerlina freezes not only in the cold and monumental architecture of a black marble environment and in the stiff “overstyled” costuming, but also in the unresolvable, impossible role-conflict of a Spanish Grande trying to reach for something like John Wayne’s sex appeal.
1993, Eva Šormová, editor, Don Juan and Faust in the XXth Century: Theatre Conference, 27.9. - 1.10.1991, Prague, Charles University, page 274
Was it Uncle Richard’s fault that he looked like a Spanish Grande, that women rarely could resist his melancholy brown eyes smoldering with an indefinable something?
2004, Irene Awret, “Part One: Berlin”, in They’ll Have to Catch Me First: An Artist’s Coming of Age in the Third Reich, Madison, Wis.: The University of Wisconsin Press, page 36
grande3
adjective
comparative more grande, superlative most grande
Quotations
A supremely happy family waved goodbye to an elderly grande dame and a namesake who had just enrolled in her first lesson in becoming a grande lady. […] In Litchfield, Connecticut, the Hutchinson brothers rushed to tell the grande old dame her daughter was making history.
1993, Donald S. Metz, Madame President, New Saga Publishers, pages 147, 270