Disraeli

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The surname of a 19th-century British statesman and novelist who twice served as Conservative Prime Minister
2. A 19th-century British politician and author remembered as a Conservative Prime Minister and writer of popular novels
3. The name of the Victorian-era British leader who was both a Conservative Prime Minister and a successful novelist

Etymology: Benjamin Disraeli, the Conservative prime minister who served twice (1868 and 1874–1880), was a novelist before he was a politician, and his surname became a common noun only in the sense of a person, not a thing. As a proper noun, "Disraeli" needs no etymology beyond the family name itself, which he was born with in London in 1804. His father, Isaac D'Israeli, was a man of letters, and the family was of Italian Jewish descent; the spelling "Disraeli" came from Benjamin's own decision to drop the apostrophe and the "D'" when he was baptised into the Church of England as a boy of twelve, in 1817. The name thus comes from a Sephardic Jewish family whose ancestors had moved from Venice, where the surname likely derives from the Italian place name "Israele" or a similar personal form, though the exact origin is uncertain. Within English, the form "Disraeli" is now used for the man himself, and the lowercase version appears only in the sense of a politician of his type or in historical writing about him.