notability

note +‎ -ability

notability (countable and uncountable, plural notabilities)

1. (uncountable) The quality or state of being notable or eminent.

   Synonym: noteworthiness

2. (countable) A notable or eminent person or thing.
   • 2012, Mohamed Fahmy Menza, Patronage Politics in Egypt: The National Democratic Party and Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo:

     Lesser notabilities have indeed utilized and built upon the opportunities created for filling in the gaps within the socioeconomic and political maps of the popular community.

3. Locally eminent people; the bourgeoisie or upper middle class
   • 2002 Jonathan B. Knudsen, Justus Möser and the German Enlightenment p.54 →ISBN

     Just as the notability lived in its own social universe between the common citizenry and the aristocracy, so too did its intellectual universe express this complex mediation.

   • 2014 Keith David Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class p.104 (Princeton University Press) →ISBN

     Such petitions were part of the role of the notability as understood at the time; a manifestation of their social hegemony was the obligation to speak for or represent the local community to the imperial center.

• bitonality