Militia

How to spell militia

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce militia

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does militia mean?

1. nounA military force made up of ordinary citizens rather than professional soldiers, typically raised in an emergency.

Militia in a sentence

• The colony relied on a volunteer militia to defend its borders.

• Farmers and shopkeepers joined the local militia when the call to arms went out.

Where does militia come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from the Latin militia, which meant 'military service' or 'warfare', and was built on miles (genitive militis), the ordinary Latin word for a 'soldier'. In its earliest English use, recorded in the 1500s, it carried that broad Latin sense of soldiering or military discipline in general. By the 1600s it had narrowed to its modern meaning: a body of citizens enrolled for military service who are not professional soldiers, called up only in an emergency. The same Latin root survives in everyday relatives such as 'military' and 'militant', which is a helpful memory hook for the spelling. The classic trap is the ending: the word sounds like it finishes with 'sha', yet it is spelled '-tia', because the Latin '-ti-' before a vowel softened into that 'sh' sound on its way through English.

How the word is built

• milit- (from Latin miles, soldier)
• -ia (Latin noun suffix denoting a state or body)