Minister

How to spell minister

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce minister

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does minister mean?

1. nounA senior politician who heads or helps run a government department.
2. nounA member of the clergy, especially in a Protestant church.
3. verbTo attend to the needs of others, especially by giving care or help.

Minister in a sentence

• noun

  The finance minister announced a new round of tax cuts.

• noun

  The minister led the congregation in the closing hymn.

• verb

  The nurses worked through the night to minister to the injured.

• noun

  The prime minister met foreign leaders at the summit.

• noun

  A local minister officiated at the wedding on Saturday.

• verb

  Volunteers came each week to minister to the housebound elderly.

Where does minister come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin minister, meaning 'servant', 'attendant', or 'helper'. That noun was built on minus, meaning 'less' or 'lesser', and it stood in deliberate contrast to magister, the 'master' or 'chief', which came from magis, meaning 'more'; so a minister was originally the lesser figure who served, while a magister was the greater one who led. English took the word in through Old French ministre during the 1200s, first in the religious sense of one who serves a church or congregation. From the 1600s it broadened into politics, where a minister was a servant of the crown or state entrusted with a department of government. The buried idea of 'serving' is a useful spelling cue: the word keeps the simple mini- of minus, with no doubled letters and no surprises, just the agent ending -ster.

How the word is built

• mini- (from minus: less)
• -ster (agent suffix, one who serves)