Dean

How to spell dean

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dean

What does dean mean?

1. nounA senior university or college official who heads a faculty or oversees students and staff.
2. nounA senior clergyman who presides over the chapter of a cathedral or a group of parishes.

Dean in a sentence

• The dean of the law faculty signed the graduation certificates.

• The dean led the evening service in the cathedral.

• Students appealed to the dean after the exam timetable clashed.

• The bishop appointed a new dean for the diocese.

Where does dean come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin decanus, which literally meant 'a leader of ten', built on decem, the Latin word for 'ten'. In the late Roman army a decanus commanded a squad of ten soldiers, and the same word was later borrowed by the church to describe a monk who supervised ten others in a monastery. From there the title spread to senior clergy in charge of a cathedral chapter and then to the academic world, where a dean came to head a faculty or oversee students. English took the word in the 1300s through Old French deien, and the modern spelling settled into the simple, deceptively plain 'dean'. Its tidy four letters hide that surprising numerical root, and it is a near twin in sound for 'dene', an old word for a wooded valley.

How the word is built

• dean (from Latin decanus: chief of ten)