Citizenship

How to spell citizenship

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce citizenship

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does citizenship mean?

1. nounThe legal status of belonging to a particular country, with the rights and duties that come with it.
2. nounThe qualities and behaviour expected of a responsible member of a community.

Citizenship in a sentence

• She applied for dual citizenship after living abroad for a decade.

• Recycling and voting are small acts of good citizenship.

• The exam tests applicants on the history and duties tied to citizenship.

• The school awards a prize for citizenship to pupils who help others.

Where does citizenship come from?

Language of origin: French

The word combines citizen with the native English suffix -ship. Citizen came into English in the early 1300s from Anglo-Norman citezein, a variant of Old French citeain, which described a person who lived in a city or town; it traces back to the Latin civitas, meaning a community of citizens or a city-state, and ultimately to civis, the Latin word for a townsman or fellow member of a state. The suffix -ship is genuinely Old English, from -scipe, meaning a state, condition, or quality, the same element that gives us friendship and hardship. Joined together, citizenship literally names the condition of being a citizen, and the abstract sense of legal membership in a nation developed strongly from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries onward. The slightly odd-looking 'z' is worth noting: it preserves the older spelling of citizen, where a 'z' replaced an earlier 's' sound, and that letter is the main spot writers pause over.

How the word is built

• citizen (from Old French citeain: city dweller)
• -ship (state or condition of)