Nominee

How to spell nominee

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce nominee

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nominee mean?

1. nounA person who has been formally proposed or named as a candidate for a position, award, or honour.
2. nounA person or company named to hold shares or property on behalf of the true owner.

Nominee in a sentence

• The award nominee thanked the committee in a short speech.

• The shares were registered through a nominee to keep ownership private.

• Each nominee for the board seat submitted a written statement.

• The bank acts as nominee for thousands of small investors.

Where does nominee come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin nomen, meaning 'name', and the related verb nominare, 'to name' or 'to call by name'. English already had the verb 'nominate', borrowed from that Latin source in the 1500s, when speakers needed a noun for the person who had been named or put forward. To make it, they attached the suffix '-ee', which English took from French legal language, where it marked the person on the receiving end of an action (as in 'employee' or 'payee'). A nominee is therefore literally 'one who has been named', and the same nomen root sits quietly inside everyday relatives like 'noun', 'denomination', and 'renown'. Keeping that '-ee' ending in mind, the part that means 'the one named', helps fix the spelling.

How the word is built

• nomin- (from Latin nomen: name)
• -ee (one who is the object of an action)