Province

How to spell province

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce province

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does province mean?

1. nounA principal administrative division of a country, often with its own regional government.
2. nounA person's particular sphere of knowledge, duty, or concern.

Province in a sentence

• The company opened a branch office in every province of the country.

• Approving the budget falls outside her province, so she referred it upward.

• Taxes vary from one province to the next, so she checked the local rate.

• Medieval poetry is really his province, not modern fiction.

Where does province come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin provincia, which originally meant the sphere of duty or official charge assigned to a Roman magistrate, and later came to mean a conquered territory administered by Rome. The deeper origins of provincia are debated; one common explanation links it to pro 'on behalf of' and a root tied to vincere 'to conquer', suggesting territory taken in conquest, though scholars are not certain of this. English borrowed the word through Old French province during the 1300s, keeping the sense of a region governed as part of a larger state. Over time it broadened to mean any large administrative district of a country, such as a Canadian province, and figuratively a person's area of knowledge or responsibility, as in 'that is not my province'. The quiet trap in spelling is the unstressed second syllable, where the 'vince' ending can tempt writers toward 'vance' or 'vence'.

How the word is built

• prov- (from Latin provincia: an official charge or conquered territory)
• -ince (anglicised ending)