Geopolitical

How to spell geopolitical

12 letters · 6 syllables

How to pronounce geopolitical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does geopolitical mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to how geography, location, and natural resources influence the politics and power of nations.

Geopolitical in a sentence

• The conflict raised serious geopolitical tensions across the region.

• Oil pipelines remain a geopolitical flashpoint between the two countries.

Where does geopolitical come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This adjective is built from two Greek elements: geo, meaning 'earth' or 'land', and politikos, meaning 'of citizens, of the state', which itself traces back to polis, the Greek word for a city or city-state. The combined idea of 'geopolitics' was popularised in the early twentieth century by the Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellen and the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel, who used the German term Geopolitik to describe how geography shapes the power and ambitions of nations. English borrowed the noun 'geopolitics' from this German coinage around 1900, and 'geopolitical' followed as the natural adjective. The same geo root appears in everyday words such as geography and geology, while the polit element ties it to politics and metropolis. The spelling trap is the quiet seam in the middle, where the unstressed o of geo runs straight into polit without any visible break.

How the word is built

• geo- (earth)
• polit- (from Greek politikos: of citizens or the state)
• -ical (adjective suffix)