Roman

How to spell roman

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce roman

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does roman mean?

1. nounThe standard upright style of printed letters, as opposed to italic or bold.

Roman in a sentence

• The body text is set in roman rather than italic.

• She changed the slanted quotation back to plain roman.

Where does roman come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin Romanus, meaning 'of Rome' or 'a citizen of Rome', which was formed directly from Roma, the name of the city itself. English absorbed the term very early through Old French romain, and it carried the broad sense of anything connected with the ancient city and its empire. From there it branched into several specialised uses: 'roman numerals' are the letter-based figures the Romans used for counting, while 'roman type' describes the upright printed letterforms that early Italian printers modelled on classical Roman inscriptions, contrasting them with the slanted italic style. The spelling stays close to the Latin original and is pleasantly phonetic, so the main thing to remember is the single 'm' rather than a doubled one. When written in lowercase it usually points to the typeface or the numerals rather than to the city or its people.

How the word is built

• roman (from Latin Romanus: of Rome)