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Glite Dictionary
🐎 Volunteer cavalry 🌾 Small landowners
yeomanry

yeomanry

1 9.9
Volunteer soldiers on horses in Britain formed to defend the country
  • noun
  • /ˈjəʊmənri/
  • UK
translation icon : yeomanía
  • The yeomanry played an important role in local defense during times of crisis.
  • yeomanry regiment
  • county yeomanry
  • local yeomanry

Examples

  • That is for the Yeomanry, this is for Colonel L'Estrange.

    Peterloo (2018)

  • Cannot you see they are attacking the Yeomanry?

    Peterloo (2018)

  • You have your Manchester and Salford Yeomanry - at your disposal.

    Peterloo (2018)

  • "Sergeant, 7th Battalion, Imperial Yeomanry."

    War Horse (2011)

  • Colonel Fletcher, just where are the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry?

    Peterloo (2018)

  • I am speaking of t'Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, sir.

    Peterloo (2018)

  • The Yeomanry is here.

    Peterloo (2018)

  • As member of the United Friars, Herring was captain of the Norfolk Yeomanry and Volunteer Company of King Street.

  • It happened to be the stripe of the Royal Glasgow Yeomanry, a regiment of which I doubted he had ever been a member.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • Many members of the yeomanry trained rigorously to prepare for their duties.

Synonyms

cavalry
vsyeomanry
150 6.0

Soldiers who fight on horses or in armored vehicles

is a British volunteer force rather than broad mounted or armored units
horse cavalry
vsyeomanry
1 7.2

Soldiers who fight while riding horses in wars before vehicles were common

is a British volunteer force for home defence later joined to the territorial army

Surface Forms

yeomanry singular
yeomanries plural

Morphology

yeomanry = yeoman (semi-transparent) = yeoman + ry

Formed from 'yeoman' + the collective/class-forming suffix '-ry', but the sense 'a volunteer cavalry force' is an institutionalized specialization that may not be predictable from the base alone.

Etymology

Yeomanry comes from yeoman, a word for a free, often small landowner or 'reliable farmer', and the ending -ry meaning 'group' or 'class'. Because these local landowners formed volunteer horse soldiers, yeomanry came to mean the British volunteer cavalry force.