Republic
nounA state in which supreme power rests with the people and their elected representatives rather than a monarch.
How to spell republic
8 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce republic
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does republic mean?
- nounA state in which supreme power rests with the people and their elected representatives rather than a monarch.
Republic in a sentence
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The country became a republic after the monarchy was abolished.
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Voters in the new republic elected their first president.
Where does republic come from?
Language of origin: Latin
The word descends from the Latin phrase res publica, which literally meant 'the public thing' or 'the affair of the people', combining res 'thing, matter, affair' with publica, the feminine of publicus meaning 'of the people'. The Romans used this term to describe a state governed not by a single monarch but as a shared concern of its citizens, which is exactly the sense English keeps today. It travelled into English in the early 1600s, partly through Middle French republique, and was applied to commonwealths and states without a king. The same publicus root underlies the everyday words 'public' and 'publish', so the spelling holds onto that familiar 'public' chunk in the middle. Knowing that the whole word is really 'res' plus 'public' helps explain why it ends in -lic rather than -lick, and why there is no doubled letter to worry about.
How the word is built
- re- (matter/thing)
- public (from publicus: of the people); from Latin res publica, the public affair
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