Nationalism

How to spell nationalism

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce nationalism

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nationalism mean?

1. nounStrong loyalty and devotion to one's own nation, often placing its interests above those of other nations.

Nationalism in a sentence

• The rise of nationalism shaped much of the politics in that century.

• Economic nationalism pushed the government to favour domestic industries over imports.

Where does nationalism come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built on the Latin natio, which literally meant 'a birth' or 'a breed' and came to mean a people sharing a common origin; that noun grew from nasci, 'to be born', the same root that gives us 'native', 'nature', and 'natal'. Latin natio passed through Old French as 'nacion' and entered English in the 1300s as 'nation', a body of people of common descent. The adjective 'national' followed, and the abstract suffix -ism, taken ultimately from Greek by way of Latin and French, was attached to it to name a doctrine or organised belief. 'Nationalism' itself is a relatively modern coinage, appearing in English around the late 1700s as political thinkers began naming devotion to one's nation as a guiding principle. The spelling trap lies in the quiet doubling of the middle: 'nation' plus '-al' plus '-ism' stacks three pieces, and writers often drop a syllable or misjudge the unstressed vowels.

How the word is built

• nation (from natio: birth, people)
• -al (adjective suffix)
• -ism (doctrine/belief suffix)