English

Proper noun

Belgravia

1. An area of central London, noted for being one of the wealthiest districts in the world.
   • 1854, Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South, Chapter I,

     Not but that Edith was very thoroughly and properly in love; still she would certainly have preferred a good house in Belgravia, to all the picturesqueness of the life which Captain Lennox described at Corfu.

   • 1858, William Makepeace Thackeray, A History of Pendennis: His fortunes and misfortunes, his friends and his greatest enemy, Volume 1, Preface,

     What more exciting than a ruffian (with many admirable virtues) in St. Giles's, visited constantly by a young lady from Belgravia? What more stirring than the contrasts of society?

   • 1918, Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Chapter 6,

     […] Browning seemed rather in place, as a middle-aged gentlemanly English Pippa Passes; while afterwards, in the light of Belgravia dinner-tables, he never made part of his background except by effacement.

   • 1922, Agatha Christie, The Secret Adversary, Chapter 1,

     Tuppence's hostel was situated in what was charitably called Southern Belgravia.

Related terms

• Belgravian