Consul

How to spell consul

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce consul

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does consul mean?

1. nounAn official a government posts in a foreign city to protect its citizens and promote its trade interests.
2. nounOne of the two annually elected chief magistrates who held supreme power in the Roman Republic.

Consul in a sentence

• The stranded tourists contacted the nearest consul for an emergency passport.

• The history lecture explained how each consul served for a single year before stepping down.

• The British consul in Lisbon helped the family arrange travel home after the theft.

• Two men shared the office of consul so that no one person ruled Rome alone.

Where does consul come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from the Latin consul, the title carried by the two highest elected magistrates of the Roman Republic, who governed jointly for a year. The origin of the Latin word is not perfectly settled, but the most widely accepted view links it to consulere, meaning 'to take counsel, to deliberate', which fits officials whose role was to consult and decide on behalf of the state. English adopted the term in the Middle Ages directly in its Roman historical sense, and from the late 1500s it took on the modern diplomatic meaning: an official posted abroad to look after a country's citizens and trade interests. The shared root is exactly why consul, council, and counsel are such a tangle in writing, since all three trace back to the idea of deliberation. The clue for the spelling is that consul ends in plain -sul, with no 'c' and no 'cil', unlike its noisy cousins.

How the word is built

• consul (Latin title for a chief magistrate, probably from consulere 'to deliberate, take counsel')