Nation

How to spell nation

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce nation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nation mean?

1. nounA large community of people living under one government in a defined territory, or united by shared history and culture.

Nation in a sentence

• The entire nation watched the election results late into the night.

• Trade between the two countries has strengthened each nation economically.

Where does nation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin natio, meaning a breed, a stock, or a people sharing a common birth, and that noun was built directly on the verb nasci, 'to be born'. The underlying idea was a group bound together by shared descent, the people one is born among. English took the word in the early 1300s by way of Old French nacion, and over the following centuries the meaning broadened from a community of common ancestry to a politically organised people occupying a defined territory. The same nasci root quietly survives in a cluster of familiar relatives such as 'native', 'natal', and 'innate', all of which circle back to the notion of birth. Remembering that nat- means 'born' helps fix the spelling: the silent middle is the tidy Latin nat- plus -ion, not a phonetic 'shun'.

How the word is built

• nat- (from Latin nasci: to be born)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)