Diplomat

How to spell diplomat

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce diplomat

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does diplomat mean?

1. nounAn official appointed to represent a country and manage its relations with other nations.

Diplomat in a sentence

• The ambassador was a seasoned diplomat with decades of overseas postings.

• As a young diplomat, she negotiated trade terms between the two governments.

Where does diplomat come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek diploma, which literally meant a folded or doubled paper, since official letters and licences were once folded in two; the root is diploun, meaning 'to fold double'. In Latin and later French, diploma came to mean an official document granting a privilege, and a body of such state papers was called the diplomatic corpus. From this, French coined diplomate in the late eighteenth century for an official who managed relations between states by means of such credentials and letters of authority. English borrowed diplomat around the early nineteenth century, keeping the sense of a person skilled in negotiating on behalf of a government. The same diploma root is why a graduate's certificate and a tactful negotiator share an unexpected family history, both descending from that idea of an important folded document.

How the word is built

• diplo- (from Greek diploma: a folded paper, document)
• -mat (agent ending, one connected with documents)