Politician

How to spell politician

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce politician

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does politician mean?

1. nounA person who holds or seeks an elected office in government.

Politician in a sentence

• The veteran politician announced her retirement after thirty years in parliament.

• Every politician at the debate promised to lower taxes.

Where does politician come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the ancient Greek polis, meaning 'city' or 'city-state', the unit in which citizens governed themselves and debated public affairs. From polis came politikos, meaning 'relating to citizens or to civic life', which Latin adopted as politicus and Old French smoothed into politique. English took 'politic' in the late 1400s as an adjective meaning 'prudent in public matters', and by the 1500s had coined 'politician' for a person engaged in the business of government. Interestingly, the term first carried a faintly negative whiff of scheming and cunning before settling into its neutral modern sense of an elected or office-seeking public figure. The hidden trap in the spelling is that the final 'c' of 'politic' softens into a 'sh' sound before '-ian', so the ending is '-cian' and not '-tion' or '-sion'.

How the word is built

• polit- (from Greek polis: city, civic affairs)
• -ic (relating to)
• -ian (person who does)