Baroness

How to spell baroness

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce baroness

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does baroness mean?

1. nounA woman holding the rank of baron, either in her own right or as the wife of a baron.

Baroness in a sentence

• The baroness took her seat in the House of Lords for the first time.

• The estate passed to the baroness after her husband died.

Where does baroness come from?

Language of origin: French

The word baroness is built from baron, a title that came into English from Old French baron, itself drawn from the Medieval Latin baro, baronis. In the earliest Latin usage baro simply meant a man, and more specifically a strong or capable man, before it narrowed to mean a man who held land directly from the king or another great lord. The feminine ending -ess arrived through Old French as -esse, from the Late Latin -issa, ultimately borrowed from a Greek feminine suffix, and English used it freely to mark female versions of titles and roles. Baroness appears in English by the fifteenth century to name a baron's wife or a woman holding a barony in her own right. The single n in baron carries straight through to baroness, which is the part writers most often second-guess when they reach for a double consonant that is not there.

How the word is built

• baron (a low-ranking nobleman)
• -ess (feminine noun suffix)