Federal

How to spell federal

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce federal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does federal mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to a system of government in which power is divided between a central authority and individual states or provinces, or to the central authority itself.

Federal in a sentence

• The new federal tax rules apply to every state equally.

• A federal court handled the dispute between the two provinces.

Where does federal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin foedus, with the stem foeder-, meaning a 'covenant', 'treaty', or 'league' between parties. That root is closely related to the Latin fides, meaning 'faith' or 'trust', since a treaty was essentially a bond of mutual trust. Scholars of the 1600s built the Latin adjective foederalis to describe anything pertaining to such a covenant, and English adopted 'federal' in the mid-seventeenth century, first in religious and theological writing about the 'covenant' between God and humanity. The political meaning, a union of states bound together under a central authority, grew through the 1700s and was cemented by debates over the new American constitution. The schwa in the middle of the word, where 'feder' sounds like 'fedduh', is the spelling trap: it is feder, not 'federe' or 'fedral', and remembering the covenant root foeder helps keep that middle 'e' in place.

How the word is built

• feder- (from Latin foedus: covenant, league)
• -al (adjective suffix)