Partisan

How to spell partisan

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce partisan

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does partisan mean?

1. nounA strong, often unquestioning supporter of a particular party, faction, or cause.
2. adjectiveShowing prejudiced support for one party or cause rather than impartiality.
3. nounA member of an armed group fighting an occupying force, usually behind enemy lines.

Partisan in a sentence

• noun

  As a lifelong partisan of the local club, he never missed a match.

• adjective

  The report was criticised for its partisan tone and lack of balance.

• noun

  The village hid a wounded partisan from the occupying soldiers.

• noun

  The committee accused her of acting like a partisan rather than a neutral judge.

• adjective

  Voters were tired of the partisan bickering between the two parties.

• noun

  As a partisan, she carried messages between the hidden camps in the hills.

Where does partisan come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This word traces back to the Latin pars, with its stem part-, meaning a part, share, or side, the same root that gives English 'party', 'partial', and 'portion'. In Italian it became partigiano, literally someone who belongs to a part or faction, in other words a committed member of one side. French borrowed the term as partisan, and English took it over in the middle of the 1500s, at first describing a devoted, often blindly loyal supporter of a person or cause. From the same idea of a faction member came the wartime sense of an irregular fighter operating behind enemy lines, a meaning that grew especially vivid in the resistance movements of the twentieth century. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: the clear 'part' you can hear, followed by the softer '-isan' that is easy to render as '-ison' or '-izan'.

How the word is built

• part- (from Latin pars/partem: a part, side, faction)
• -isan (from Italian -igiano denoting an adherent or member)