Ruritanian

English

WOTD – 19 May 2010

From Ruritania +‎ -an, after the fictional kingdom used as the setting for stories by Anthony Hope (1863–1933).

Ruritanian (comparative more Ruritanian, superlative most Ruritanian)

Of or having the characteristics of adventure, romance, and intrigue, as in works of romantic fiction.
- 2007, Walter Lippman, chapter X, in Public Opinion, page 79:
  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.
Used to describe a fictitious and generic foreign government or person, used to state a general or hypothetical situation.
- 1968, Robert Ellsworth Elder, The Information Machine, page 339:
  In practice, the Ruritanian regime is autocratic, controlling business, government, finance, and military posts.

of or having the characteristics of adventure, romance, and intrigue

used to describe a fictitious and generic foreign government or person

Ruritanian (plural Ruritanians)

person from the fictional land of Ruritania