Constituent

How to spell constituent

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce constituent

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does constituent mean?

1. nounA person living in an area represented by an elected official, especially a voter in that area.
2. nounA part or element that helps make up a whole.
3. adjectiveForming part of a whole, or having the power to frame or alter a constitution.

Constituent in a sentence

• noun

  The member of parliament held a surgery to hear from every worried constituent.

• noun

  Water is a vital constituent of healthy soil.

• adjective

  The engineer examined each constituent part of the engine.

• noun

  The senator answered a letter from an elderly constituent about pension delays.

• noun

  The chemist listed every constituent of the new compound.

• adjective

  The nation elected a constituent assembly to draft its new charter.

Where does constituent come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb constituere, which meant 'to set up', 'to establish', or 'to put together', formed from the prefix con- 'together' and statuere 'to set up or place', itself a relative of stare 'to stand'. Its present participle, constituens (stem constituent-), described something that 'makes up' or 'composes' a whole, and English borrowed the form in the early 1600s, first as a term for the parts that constitute something. The political sense arose from the idea that voters together 'constitute', or appoint, the person who represents them, so a constituent is literally one who helps set up the representative. The same Latin root sits inside the everyday words 'constitution', 'statute', and 'institute', all sharing the notion of something firmly set in place. For the speller, the trap is the unstressed middle and ending: the '-stitu-' echoes 'statute', and the word ends in '-ent', not '-ant', a distinction worth fixing in memory.

How the word is built

• con- (together)
• stitu (from Latin statuere: to set up, establish)
• -ent (present-participle / agent suffix)