Dynasty

How to spell dynasty

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce dynasty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dynasty mean?

1. nounA succession of rulers or leaders from the same family, or a powerful family that holds influence over a long period.

Dynasty in a sentence

• The dynasty ruled the region for nearly three hundred years.

• Historians traced the rise and fall of each imperial dynasty.

Where does dynasty come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek dunasteia, meaning 'power', 'lordship', or 'dominion', which was built on dunastes, a 'lord' or 'ruler', and ultimately on the verb dunasthai, 'to be able' or 'to have power'. The sense gradually narrowed from raw power to the specific idea of a succession of rulers from the same family. It travelled into Latin as dynastia, then into Old French as dynastie, before reaching English in the fifteenth century. The same Greek root for power, dunamis, also gives us the everyday words 'dynamic', 'dynamo', and 'dynamite', so the shared 'dyn-' element is a useful reminder of where the tricky opening spelling comes from. The main spelling trap is the unstressed second vowel, written 'a' but heard as a faint schwa, and the unexpected 'y' standing where a reader might expect an 'i'.

How the word is built

• dynast (from Greek dunastes: ruler, lord)
• -y (noun suffix forming the abstract sense of rule or line of rulers)