Senior

How to spell senior

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce senior

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does senior mean?

1. adjectiveHigher in rank, authority, or length of service; or older in age.
2. nounAn older person, especially one past retirement age.
3. nounA student in the final year of high school or college.

Senior in a sentence

• adjective

  The company hired a senior engineer to lead the project.

• noun

  The cinema offers a discount for every senior on weekday afternoons.

• noun

  Every graduating senior collected a cap and gown before the ceremony.

• adjective

  As the senior partner, she signs off on every major contract.

• noun

  The leisure centre runs a swimming session aimed at each senior in the community.

• noun

  As a senior, she spent the autumn applying to several universities.

Where does senior come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from the Latin senior, which is the comparative form of senex, meaning 'old' or 'an old man'; senior therefore literally meant 'older' or 'elder'. English took it up in the late medieval period, at first as a way of marking the elder of two people who shared a name, much as we still write 'senior' after a father's name to distinguish him from his son. From that 'older' sense it broadened into the idea of being higher in rank, length of service, or authority, since in many institutions age and seniority went hand in hand. The same Latin senex is the root of a surprising family of English words, including 'senate' (originally a council of elders), 'senile', and even 'sir', and the title 'señor' in Spanish and 'signor' in Italian share the identical ancestor. Because the spelling keeps the Latin -ior ending rather than the everyday -er we use for English comparatives, writers sometimes stumble over the final syllable.

How the word is built

• seni- (from Latin senex: old)
• -or (comparative suffix: older)