Gentry are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. Gentry, in its widest connotation, refers to people of good social position connected to landed estates, upper levels of the clergy, or "gentle" families of long descent who in some cases never obtained the official right to bear a coat of arms. The gentry largely consisted of landowners who could live entirely from rental income or at least had a country estate; some were gentleman farmers. In the United Kingdom, the term gentry refers to the landed gentry: the majority of the land-owning social class who typically had a coat of arms but did not have a peerage. The adjective "patrician" describes in comparison other analogous traditional social elite strata based in cities, such as the free cities of Italy and the free imperial cities of Germany, Switzerland, and the Hanseatic League.

भद्रवर्ग (gentry) किसी पारम्परिक समाज में कुलीनवर्ग के नीचे का वह सामाजिक वर्ग होता है जिसके सदस्य अच्छे परिवारों में जन्में व अच्छे संस्कारों से युक्त माने जाते हैं। पारम्परिक समाजों में, जब अधिकांश लोग अनपढ़ थे, वे अक्सर शिक्षित भी हुआ करते थे और शिष्ट माने जाते थे।