magnate

Meanings

1. Powerful industrialist; captain of industry.
2. A person of rank, influence or distinction in any sphere.
3. In medieval and early modern Italy, a member of a legally defined category of especially wealthy patrician families, often deprived of the right to political participation by republican governments.

Etymology

Borrowed into late Middle English from Late Latin magnātēs, plural of magnās, from magnus (“great”), mid 15th c.