illuminati
/ɪˌl(j)uːmɪˈnɑːti
/plural noun
1People claiming to possess special enlightenment or knowledge of something: some mysterious standard known only to the illuminati of the organization...
- The other prime role of Oxford is to take students, selected by bloodline, and prepare them for life as illuminati, within politics, business, finance and the media.
- Their names should be spoken among the illuminati of our culture.
- At the moment the front runners are ‘a crude Yank crashing the Brit party’ and a ‘bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world’.
1.1 (Illuminati) A sect of 16th-century Spanish heretics who claimed special religious enlightenment.
1.2 (Illuminati) A Bavarian secret society founded in 1776, organized like the Freemasons.
Derivatives
illuminism
/ noun ...- In Paz's view, ‘the belief in correspondences between all beings and worlds predates Christianity, crosses the Middle Ages, and, through Neoplatonism, illuminism, and occultism, reaches the nineteenth century’.
illuminist
/ noun ...- All groups have goals, and the Illuminists are no exception.
Origin
Late 16th century: plural of Italian illuminato or Latin illuminatus 'enlightened', past participle of illuminare (see illuminate).