belted earl

belted earl (plural belted earls)

1. An earl whose title goes back to the period prior to the 18th century when a sword and belt received from the monarch were tokens of that title.
   • 1728, Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, The History of Scotland from 1436 to 1565‎, Glasgow, published 1749, page 14:

     This William was the sixth belted earl of that house of Douglas.

   • 1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 2, in Anne of Green Gables‎:

     It was pretty interesting to imagine things about them—to imagine that perhaps the girl who sat next to you was really the daughter of a belted earl, who had been stolen away from her parents in her infancy by a cruel nurse who died before she could confess.

   • 1945, Sinclair Lewis, Cass Timberlane: A Novel of Husbands and Wives‎, Chapter:

     It was Boone Havock and his immense and parrot-squawking wife Queenie who were the great people, the belted earl and terraced countess, of the occasion […]

• belted knight