Dominican

How to spell dominican

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce dominican

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dominican mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the Dominican Republic, its people, or its culture.
2. adjectiveRelating to the Roman Catholic order of friars founded by Saint Dominic.

Dominican in a sentence

• The restaurant serves authentic dominican rice and beans.

• The dominican friars ran a small school attached to the abbey.

• She traced her family back to a small dominican fishing village.

• He studied theology at a dominican college for four years.

Where does dominican come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin Dominicus, meaning 'belonging to the Lord' or 'of the Lord', formed from dominus, the everyday Latin word for 'master' or 'lord'. From that root came the personal name Dominic, and two quite separate modern uses grew from people who bore it. The religious sense honours Saint Dominic of Caleruega, the Spanish priest who founded the Order of Preachers in the early 1200s, so his followers became known as Dominicans. The geographic sense relates to the Caribbean nation whose capital, Santo Domingo, was itself named for the same saint, giving us the Dominican Republic. The same dominus root sits behind familiar words such as 'dominate', 'dominion', and 'Sunday' in the Romance languages (for example Spanish domingo, 'the Lord's day'), which is a useful reminder that the spelling keeps the single 'm' and single 'n' of dominus rather than doubling either letter.

How the word is built

• From the personal name Dominic (Latin Dominicus, 'of the Lord')
• -an (adjective/noun suffix denoting belonging)