Patriot

How to spell patriot

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce patriot

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does patriot mean?

1. nounA person who loves their country and is loyal to it, especially one ready to support or defend it.

Patriot in a sentence

• The old soldier was remembered as a devoted patriot who served two long wars.

• Every patriot in the town gathered to mark the day of independence.

Where does patriot come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek patriotes, which meant 'fellow countryman' or 'someone of the same homeland'. That noun grew from patrios, 'of one's fathers', which in turn rests on pater, the ordinary Greek word for 'father'; the idea was of people sharing the same fatherland. Late Latin took the term over as patriota, and it then passed through French as patriote before reaching English in the late 1500s. At first it simply meant a compatriot, and only later sharpened into the modern sense of someone who loves and loyally supports their country. The same pater root underlies a whole family of English words, including paternal, patron, and patriarch, and remembering 'father' helps fix the single 't' and the i before the o that the spelling demands.

How the word is built

• patri- (from patēr: father, hence fatherland)
• -ot (suffix marking a person who belongs to or comes from)