Maverick

How to spell maverick

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce maverick

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does maverick mean?

1. nounA person who thinks and acts independently and refuses to conform to the expectations of a group.
2. adjectiveUnorthodox or independent in attitude or behaviour, unwilling to follow convention.

Maverick in a sentence

• noun

  The new director was a maverick who ignored most of the company's traditions.

• adjective

  Her maverick approach to teaching irritated the more traditional staff.

• noun

  Investors saw him as a financial maverick because he bet against the whole market.

• adjective

  The firm rewarded its most maverick engineers for ignoring the usual rules.

Where does maverick come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word is an eponym, meaning it comes from a person's name. Samuel A. Maverick (1803 to 1870) was a Texas lawyer and rancher who famously declined to brand his cattle, so any unbranded calf wandering loose tended to be called a 'maverick'. From that literal sense of an unmarked animal that belonged to no one's herd, the term broadened in American English during the later 1800s to describe a person who refuses to follow the herd, an independent thinker who will not be 'branded' by a party, group or convention. Because the word is built on a surname rather than a Latin or Greek root, there are no meaningful parts to break apart, which is part of why the spelling has to be memorised whole. The doubled idea many people expect is absent: it is a single 'v' and a single 'r', ending in plain '-ick'.

How the word is built

• maverick (from the surname Maverick, used as a common noun); no productive prefix or suffix