Regulars

How to spell regulars

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce regulars

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does regulars mean?

1. nounPeople who visit a place, especially a pub, shop, or cafe, on a frequent and familiar basis.
2. nounMembers of a permanent, professional standing army, as opposed to reserves or volunteers.

Regulars in a sentence

• The corner pub kept a few seats free for its regulars.

• The front line was held by seasoned army regulars rather than new recruits.

• The barista already knew the morning regulars by name.

• The general moved his regulars forward while the militia guarded the rear.

Where does regulars come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin regula, which literally meant a straight stick or ruler, and by extension a rule or standard for measuring things. From regula the Latins formed regularis, meaning 'according to rule', and that adjective passed into Old French as reguler before reaching English in the late 1300s, often spelled 'reguler' at first. Over time the noun use developed: a 'regular' came to mean someone or something that conforms to a fixed pattern, whether a soldier in a standing army, a member of a religious order living under a rule, or a familiar customer who turns up at the same place again and again. The same regula root underlies a whole family of English words including rule, ruler, regulate, and regiment, all carrying the idea of a measuring standard. The trap in spelling is the unstressed middle syllable, where the 'u' is easy to drop and the ending sounds more like '-lers' than the written '-lars'.

How the word is built

• regul- (from Latin regula: rule, straight stick)
• -ar (adjective/noun suffix)
• -s (plural)