Republican

How to spell republican

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce republican

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does republican mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or supporting a republic, a form of government with an elected head of state rather than a monarch.
2. nounA person who favours a republic instead of a monarchy.

Republican in a sentence

• adjective

  The country adopted a republican constitution after the king abdicated.

• noun

  As a committed republican, she argued for replacing the crown with an elected president.

• adjective

  Many citizens held strong republican views and wanted to end the monarchy.

• noun

  The debate pitted a staunch monarchist against a lifelong republican.

Where does republican come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin phrase res publica, which literally meant 'the public thing' or 'the affair of the people', combining res 'matter, affair' with publica 'public, belonging to the people'. The Romans used res publica for the state as a shared concern of its citizens rather than the property of a king. The single Latin adjective republicanus grew from that idea, and English picked the word up through French republicain in the seventeenth century, just as debates about government without a monarch were heating up. From the start it described systems where power rests with elected representatives and citizens rather than an inherited crown. A useful memory aid is that the 'public' sitting at the heart of the spelling points straight back to that original sense of the people's shared affair, so the tricky middle is really just the everyday word 'public'.

How the word is built

• re- (from res: thing, affair)
• public (from publica: of the people)
• -an (adjective/noun suffix)