Finalist

How to spell finalist

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce finalist

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does finalist mean?

1. nounA person or team that has reached the final stage of a competition.

Finalist in a sentence

• Each finalist received a certificate before the closing round.

• The judges narrowed the entries down to one finalist from each region.

Where does finalist come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built on the Latin noun finis, which literally meant 'end' or 'boundary', the same root that gives English 'finish', 'final', and 'finite'. From finis came the medieval Latin adjective finalis, meaning 'belonging to the end', which English absorbed through Old French as 'final' in the 1300s. The noun 'final', meaning the last and deciding round of a contest, became common in sporting and academic use during the 1800s. Once 'final' named that decisive stage, the agent suffix '-ist' was added to coin 'finalist', a person who has reached the final, a usage that took hold in the late nineteenth century alongside the rise of organised competitions. The spelling stays predictable as long as you remember it descends from 'final', so the trap is simply the unstressed middle vowel in '-al-'.

How the word is built

• fin- (from Latin finis: end, boundary)
• -al (adjective suffix)
• -ist (one who does or takes part)