(, German: "ancient nobility"; adjective or ) is a genealogical term introduced in late 18th-century Germany to distinguish those families whose noble rank can be traced to the 14th century or earlier. The word stands opposed to Briefadel, a term used for titles of nobility created in the early modern period or modern history by letters patent. Since the earliest known such letters were issued in the 14th century, those knightly families in northern European nobility whose noble rank predates these are designated . and families are generally further divided into categories with their ranks of titles: adlig (untitled nobility), freiherrlich (baronial), gräflich (comital), fürstlich (princely) and herzoglich (ducal) houses. The latter two are also referred to as Hochadel (High Nobility). Introduction and usage The first use of the word to designate the oldest nobility dates from 1788 and it had assumed its present-day meaning by no later than 1800. The term was used officially from the 19th century by the Royal Prussian Herald Office (). The term is found in the Almanach de Gotha from 1907, in which it is applied to all persons and families known to have been "noble" or "knightly" before 1400. The subsequent German-language publications (GHdA) and since 2015 the Gothaisches Genealogisches Handbuch continue to differentiate between and families. Contemporary use Germany According to the German genealogical reference work of the nobility (, 1951) the noble houses which count as are those families whose ancestral lineage can be demonstrated to date at least as far back as the year 1400 (in the Late Middle Ages), belonging at that time to the knightly (German ritterbürtigen) nobility. The latter includes edelfreie families (free noblemen) as well as ministeriales, a lower and in their origins mostly unfree order which arose rapidly and managed within the 14th century to elevate themselves to the lesser nobility (see: Estates of the realm). The modern concept of aristocracy () must not be confused with the term edelfrei, since the former term's scope is much broader: all families that can prove they belonged to the knightly aristocracy by no later than around 1400 (whether originally edelfrei or ministeriales) are counted today as . In fact, most of the families in the former volumes of the Gotha are of ministerialis origin, including even some of the later princely houses ("Hochadel", see below). Edelfrei families were members of an ancient, dynastic aristocratic line, free noble