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''august'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260606185347-00-⌔

august - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

august (comparativeauguster or more august, superlativeaugustest or most august)

  • Awe-inspiring, majestic, noble, venerable.
    • ✤ an august patron of the arts
    • ✤ In the book of Pſalms there are many things ſaid of David, which ſeem capable of a much auguſter ſenſe than can be pretended to be anſwered by any thing that befel himſelf.1
    • ✤ [W]e shall not, I think, be able to find language which can convey in few words more fully the idea we should always have impressed on our minds of the august character of our Lord, than the expression, “the word of life.”2
    • ✤ The commands of the august sovereign are the imperial commands, or the phœnix (the incomparable) mandate.3
    • ✤ —Inconsciously to the augustest end/Thou hast arisen: second not in rank/So much as time, to him who first ordained/That Florence, thou art to destroy, should be— […]4
    • ✤ The foolish dog […] flew at the cat, who in her fright and consternation took refuge behind the screen of the breakfast-room where his Majesty then was. The Mikado was greatly shocked and agitated. He took the cat into his august bosom, and summoning the chamberlain Tadataka, gave orders that Okinamaro should have a good thrashing and be banished to Dog Island at once.5
    • ✤ For once the story was not about Jamie Vardy, unable to equal Jimmy Dunne’s top-flight record of scoring in a dozen consecutive games, but about his august deputy Riyad Mahrez.6
    • ✤ Countless proposals flooded in, sent by sources as august as the World Academy of Sciences and as humble as elementary schools.7
    • ✤ The story of “Strangers” is a cliché of well-to-do Manhattan: Husband makes gobs of money. Wife, despite her august educational pedigree, stays at home to raise the kids, relinquishing career and otherwise idling in the make-work realm of school boards and volunteering.8
  • Of noble birth.
    • ✤ an august lineage
    • ✤ A branch of the house of Lorraine, in comparison with which even the royal race of Capet was mean, the Guises traced back their august lineage through a long line of warrior princes to the Imperial figure of Charlemagne.9

Verb

august (third-person singular simple present augusts, present participle augusting, simple past and past participle augusted)

  • (obsolete, rare) To make ripe; ripen.
  • (obsolete, rare) To bring to realization.
    • ✤ By divine science and cœlestial art/He for the cause of the dear nations toiled,/And augusted man’s heavenly hopes that so,/[…]/he might, by awful rites/[…]/Adhæsion with Divinity achieve.10

Noun

august (plural augusts)

  • Alternative form of auguste (“kind of clown”).

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ɔːˈɡʌst/
  • (General American) IPA: /ɔˈɡʌst/, /ə-/
    • (cot–caught merger) IPA: /ɑˈɡʌst/
  • Audio (General American): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ʌst
  • Hyphenation: au‧gust

Etymology 1

From French auguste (“noble, stately; august”) or Latin augustus (“majestic, venerable, august; imperial, royal”),11 from augeō (“to augment, increase; to enlarge, expand, spread”). Doublet of August and Augustus.

Etymology 2

From August.

Etymology 3

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1796, Gilbert Bishop of Sarum [i.e., Gilbert Burnet], “Article VII. Of the Old Testament.”, in An Exposition of the XXXIX Articles of the Church of England, Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, →OCLC, page 123: ↩

  2. 1837 August 31, William Sollis, A Sermon, Preached in Holsworthy Church on Thursday, August 31, 1837, at the Anniversaries of the Societies for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts. […], Launceston, Cornwall: Penheale-Press, Rev. H. A. Simcoe, →OCLC, page 7: ↩

  3. 1841, E[lijah] C[oleman] Bridgman, “Governmental Affairs”, in A Chinese Chrestomathy in the Canton Dialect, Macao: S[amuel] Wells Williams, →OCLC, section second (Imperial Titles), page 558: ↩

  4. 1846, Robert Browning, “Luria”, in Bells and Pomegranates, volumes VIII (Luria; and A Soul’s Tragedy), London: Edward Moxon, →OCLC; republished in Poems […] In Two Volumes, new edition, volume II, London: Chapman & Hall, […], 1849, →OCLC, act IV, page 192: ↩

  5. 1899, Sei Shōnagon, “Makura Zōshi [The Attack of the Dog Okinamaro upon the Cat Miyōbu no Otodo]”, in W[illiam] G[eorge] Aston, A History of Japanese Literature, London: William Heinemann, →OCLC, page 111: ↩

  6. 2015 December 5, Alan Smith, “Leicester City back on top as Riyad Mahrez hat-trick downs Swansea City”, in The Guardian ‎, London, archived from the original on 29 March 2017: ↩

  7. 2016, Liu Cixin, translated by Ken Liu, Death’s End, Tor, translation of 死神永生, →ISBN, page 280: ↩

  8. 2026 January 11, Alex Kuczynski, “Her Life Was an Old-Money Dream. It Collapsed in a Moment.”, in The New York Times ‎, →ISSN: ↩

  9. 1873, Walter Fitz Patrick, chapter I, in The Great Condé and the Period of the Fronde: A Historical Sketch, volume I, London: T[homas] Cautley Newby, publisher, […], →OCLC, page 7: ↩

  10. 1855, Philip James Bailey, The Mystic and Other Poems, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, page 55: ↩

  11. “august”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022. ↩

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