Prestigious

How to spell prestigious

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce prestigious

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does prestigious mean?

1. adjectiveInspiring respect and admiration because of high status, quality, or reputation.

Prestigious in a sentence

• She won a prestigious scholarship to study abroad.

• The firm occupies a prestigious address in the financial district.

Where does prestigious come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin praestigiae, meaning 'juggler's tricks' or 'illusions', a noun connected to praestringere, literally 'to bind fast' or 'to blindfold', and so figuratively 'to dazzle the eyes'. Because of this, the earliest English sense of prestigious, recorded in the 1500s, was actually unflattering: it meant 'deceptive', 'illusory', or characterised by trickery. The related noun 'prestige' came into English from French in the 1600s still carrying that idea of a dazzling illusion. Only in the 1800s did 'prestige' soften into the modern admiring sense of widespread respect and standing, and the adjective prestigious followed, shedding its old whiff of fraud. Knowing that the root is about dazzling the eye helps fix the spelling: it keeps the 'sti' before the soft '-gious' ending, just as in the noun prestige.

How the word is built

• prestig- (from Latin praestigium: illusion, conjuring trick)
• -ious (adjective suffix: full of)