Regent

How to spell regent

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce regent

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does regent mean?

1. nounA person appointed to govern a country because the monarch is a minor, absent, or unable to rule.
2. nounA member of a governing board of a university or other institution, especially in North America.

Regent in a sentence

• The queen was only six, so her uncle ruled as regent for a decade.

• The university appointed a new regent to its governing board last month.

• The council named a regent to manage state affairs until the prince came of age.

• Each regent serves a six-year term overseeing the state university system.

Where does regent come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin verb regere, which meant 'to rule, to direct, or to keep straight', the same root that gives us 'regal', 'regime', and 'rector'. The present participle was regens, with the stem regent-, literally meaning 'ruling' or 'one who is ruling'. In medieval Latin regens came to name a person appointed to govern in place of a monarch who was absent, ill, or too young to reign, and English picked the word up through Old French in the late 1300s. The spelling stayed close to the Latin stem, which is why it ends in -ent rather than the -ant you might expect by ear. The same regere lineage also surfaces in 'regiment' and even in 'correct', where the sense of 'guiding straight' survives most clearly.

How the word is built

• reg- (from Latin regere: to rule, to guide)
• -ent (agent suffix: one who does)