Provincial

How to spell provincial

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce provincial

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does provincial mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to a province or to the parts of a country outside the capital city.
2. adjectiveLimited or unsophisticated in outlook, as if unaware of wider culture or fashion.

Provincial in a sentence

• The provincial government manages roads and hospitals across the region.

• His provincial attitudes made the new international staff feel unwelcome.

• She moved from the capital to a quiet provincial town for the slower pace.

• The critic dismissed the menu as dull and provincial.

Where does provincial come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin provincialis, meaning 'belonging to a province', which was built on provincia, the Roman term for a conquered territory administered from Rome. The Romans used provincia for any region outside Italy that fell under their control, so the word always carried the flavour of somewhere away from the capital and the centre of power. English took it up through Old French provincial in the fourteenth century, at first simply meaning a person or thing connected with a province, especially in church administration where a 'provincial' headed a religious order in a region. Over time it gathered a less flattering second sense: because life in the provinces was seen as far from the fashionable metropolis, 'provincial' came to suggest narrow, unsophisticated tastes. The spelling trap is the soft -cial ending, where the c is sounded like 'sh' yet still written as a single c after the n, so writers are tempted to drop the c or swap it for a t.

How the word is built

• provinc- (from Latin provincia: a province, an administrative region)
• -ial (adjective and noun suffix)