How to Use grandee in a Sentence

grandee

noun
  • Trump had just cut through the grandees like a hot knife through butter.
    — Charles Krauthammer, The Mercury News, 24 Mar. 2017
  • Trump had just cut through the grandees like a hot knife through butter.
    — Charles Krauthammer, The Denver Post, 23 Mar. 2017
  • The slum kid who dressed like a British grandee had something of the scam artist about him.
    — Benjamin Moser, Harper's magazine, 19 Aug. 2019
  • The grandees of the Democratic Party may want to move on.
    — Keith Naughton, The Washington Examiner, 14 Mar. 2026
  • Sometimes the mist clears to reveal solutions, but only those a grandee could love.
    — William Easterly, WSJ, 17 June 2019
  • With harlots in fish-net stockings hanging on each arm, a self-satisfied grandee, shades and ascot in place, struts down a city sidewalk.
    — Garry Trudeau, New York Times, 11 Dec. 2017
  • The role usually goes to grandee of the City of London, the financial district.
    — David Goodman, Bloomberg.com, 16 Apr. 2018
  • One is a grandee of Wall Street dealmaking, the other a scion of Goldman Sachs.
    — Sonali Basak, Bloomberg.com, 19 Nov. 2020
  • Local farmers couldn’t own their land and were instead rent-paying tenants of grandees like Nicholas—aristocrats in all but name.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 31 Aug. 2023
  • And all of them are just as much in karmic thrall as the grandees who came before them, undone by ambition, rashness and cosmic retribution.
    — Daniel Akst, WSJ, 5 Oct. 2018
  • State Department grandees tended to see these White House advisers as rivals.
    — James R. Hagerty, WSJ, 30 Mar. 2018
  • Yet So far Russia ‘s grandees and people are rallying to the Motherland and its ruler; its huge army is holding.
    — Time, 24 Aug. 2023
  • Goelet was a grandee, one of the Four Hundred certifiably rich families in New York.
    — Brian T. Allen, National Review, 29 June 2019
  • The opening in the rim fitted under the grandee’s chin while the barber officiated and courtiers gathered exchanging gossip of the day.
    — Carolyn Patten | For The Oregonian/oregonlive, OregonLive.com, 1 Feb. 2018
  • Etched onto it is a circle of faces of superannuated ÖVP grandees.
    — The Economist, 14 Oct. 2017
  • Each book in the series seeks to shed some light on the era’s inequities, hypocrisies and the contrasting worlds of privileged grandees and street denizens such as brothel keepers, pickpockets and con artists.
    — Rachel Pannett, Washington Post, 13 Apr. 2023
  • Money that was meant to go toward her presidential run was instead spent on the campaign’s of old political grandees looking to preserve any inkling of their past power.
    — Alex González Ormerod, TIME, 30 May 2024
  • Its deputy chairman is Peter Mandelson, a Labour grandee who has held multiple cabinet posts.
    — Robert Olsen, Forbes, 8 Sep. 2024
  • The new setup would be approved by a party conference in December, but that time frame was quickly assailed by party grandees who said a new leader should be found sooner.
    — Arne Delfs, Bloomberg.com, 5 May 2020
  • First came allies from his two terms as mayor of London, such as Sir Edward Lister, a local-government grandee.
    — The Economist, 25 July 2019
  • The result was a vindication for Sanchez, who was ousted by party grandees in September against the wishes of the rank-and-file membership.
    — Esteban Duarte, Bloomberg.com, 21 May 2017
  • Grandees have been coming here since the Romans, with their unerring nose for real estate, founded it, from the lords of Genoa and Milan to today’s fashion elite.
    — Alexander Lobrano, Town & Country, 2 June 2017
  • Instead, the concept has been perverted to mean higher-ed grandees' exclusive right to determine who participates in scholarly life.
    — Ilya Shapiro, MSNBC Newsweek, 14 Aug. 2025
  • His paintings had mostly been for grandees, Goya’s patrons at the Spanish court, but his prints were instead about them — and about ordinary Spanish people.
    — Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, 10 June 2024
  • Sir William Cash, another Eurosceptic grandee, recalls tutoring the young Jacob in the cause.
    — The Economist, 1 Feb. 2018
  • And on her first mission, this overqualified woman joins H for a night of hedonism diplomacy, showing some sluggy alien grandee a good time in a London nightclub.
    — Darren Franich, EW.com, 12 June 2019
  • Apparently only the African rank and file are so helpless as to require the tender mercies of the World Bank’s notorious grandees.
    — William Easterly, WSJ, 17 June 2019
  • The drama was divided, as the title implies, between the grandees in the upper rooms and the crew of loyal servants who, from their base of operations down below, saw to their employers’ every need.
    — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 20 Sep. 2019
  • The genteel decor takes its cues from the quintas (farms) of local wine grandees, and each room features photographs and accessories contributed by a different Portuguese winemaker.
    — Condé Nast, Condé Nast Traveler, 23 June 2026
  • Days earlier, the longtime political grandee who had a reputation as a ruthless political fixer, had stepped down as a member of the House of Lords.
    — Camille Behnke, NBC news, 23 Feb. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'grandee.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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