Magistrate

How to spell magistrate

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce magistrate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does magistrate mean?

1. nounA judicial officer who hears and decides minor legal cases in a local court.

Magistrate in a sentence

• The magistrate dismissed the parking charge after reviewing the photographs.

• The defendant appeared before the magistrate on a charge of careless driving.

Where does magistrate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin magistratus, which named both a public office and the official who held it. That noun was built on magister, meaning 'master' or 'chief person', a word that itself grew from magnus, 'great', so the literal idea was someone in a greater or higher position. English took the word in during the 1300s through legal and administrative use, applying it to officials charged with enforcing the law and administering justice in local courts. The same magister root still echoes in everyday relatives such as 'master', 'mister', and 'maestro', all of which trace back to that sense of a person set above others. The spelling trap lies in the unstressed middle: writers hear a vague schwa and may guess 'magestrate', but the Latin magistr- keeps the 'i' firmly in place.

How the word is built

• magistr- (from Latin magister: master, chief)
• -ate (noun suffix denoting an office or rank)