Dominant

How to spell dominant

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce dominant

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dominant mean?

1. adjectiveMost powerful, important, or influential within a group or situation.

Dominant in a sentence

• The company became the dominant player in the smartphone market.

• A single dominant theme runs through her entire research project.

Where does dominant come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb dominari, meaning 'to rule' or 'to be master over', which was itself built on dominus, the word for a lord or master of a household (the same dominus root sits inside 'dominate', 'domain', and even 'dungeon'). The present participle dominans, with its stem dominant-, described something that was actively ruling or holding sway. English took the word in by way of Old French during the late Middle Ages, using it from around the fifteenth century to mean 'ruling' or 'commanding'. Over time the sense broadened from literal political mastery to anything that is most powerful, most influential, or most prominent in a group. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed final syllable: the ending is -ant, not -ent, a choice that the original Latin participle dominant- justifies but that the ear cannot detect.

How the word is built

• domin- (from dominus: lord, master)
• -ant (adjective-forming suffix denoting a state or quality)