fourth estate

views updated May 17 2018

fourth estate Name sometimes given to the press. The phrase was first used by Thomas Babington Macaulay when he wrote (1828) of the House of Commons that: “The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.” This was an expansion of the concept of the three estates – the lords spiritual, lords temporal, and commons.

World Encyclopedia

fourth estate

views updated May 29 2018

fourth es·tate • n. (the fourth estate) the press; the profession of journalism: copy desks are held together by the bad-news contingent of the fourth estate.

The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English

Fourth Estate

views updated May 21 2018

Fourth Estate

the complete body of journalists; the profession of journalism—Slang Dictionary, 1874.

Dictionary of Collective Nouns and Group Terms

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