Premiership

How to spell premiership

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce premiership

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does premiership mean?

1. nounThe office, position, or period in power of a prime minister or premier.
2. nounThe top division of a professional sports league, especially in football or rugby.

Premiership in a sentence

• Her premiership lasted almost a decade before she resigned.

• The club won promotion to the premiership after a strong season.

• Economic reform dominated the early years of his premiership.

• Three teams are relegated from the premiership each year.

Where does premiership come from?

Language of origin: French

The word is built on 'premier', which English took from the French premier meaning simply 'first', itself descended from the Latin primarius, 'of the first rank' or 'principal', from primus, 'first'. In English 'premier' came to name the foremost minister of a government, the one standing first among colleagues, and to that noun was attached the thoroughly native ending '-ship', the same Old English suffix found in friendship and ownership that turns a person into the office, state, or rank they hold. So premiership literally means 'the office or rank of the premier', and it entered general use during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as parliamentary government matured. The spelling trap lives in the middle: writers must keep the French '-mier' sequence intact before the plain English '-ship', and remember the single 'm'. The same primus root surfaces in primary, prime, and premiere, which can help anchor the unstressed vowels.

How the word is built

• premier (first, chief, from Latin primarius 'of the first rank')
• -ship (native English suffix denoting a state, office, or rank)