mənBased on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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yeomanry (ˈjəʊmənrɪ) ![[Click for IPA pronunciation guide]](http://static.sfdict.com/dictstatic/g/d/dictionary_questionbutton_default.gif) | |
| —n | |
| 1. | yeomen collectively |
| 2. | (in Britain) a volunteer cavalry force, organized in 1761 for home defence: merged into the Territorial Army in 1907 |
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| an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle. |
| a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal. |
yeomanry
in English history, a class intermediate between the gentry and the labourers; a yeoman was usually a landholder but could also be a retainer, guard, attendant, or subordinate official. The word appears in Middle English as yemen, or yoman, and is perhaps a contraction of yeng man or yong man, meaning young man, or attendant. Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (late 14th century) depicts a yeoman who is a forester and a retainer. Most yeomen of the later Middle Ages were probably occupied in cultivating the land; Raphael Holinshed, in his Chronicles (1577), described them as having free land worth 6 (originally 40 shillings) annually and as not being entitled to bear arms
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