Sir

How to spell sir

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sir

What does sir mean?

1. nounA respectful or formal way to address or refer to a man.
2. nounThe honorific title placed before the first name of a knight or baronet.

Sir in a sentence

• The waiter greeted each guest with a courteous sir.

• After the ceremony she could properly call him sir before his given name.

• The soldier answered his commanding officer with a sharp sir and a salute.

• The programme listed the conductor by his full title as sir followed by his name.

Where does sir come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from 'sire', which English took from Old French in the medieval period, where it functioned as a respectful address to a lord or a king. 'Sire' itself goes back to the Latin senior, meaning literally 'older' or 'an elder', the comparative of senex 'old man'; in many cultures age implied authority, so a word for an elder naturally became a word for a superior. By the 1200s the unstressed form had shortened to the curt single syllable 'sir', used as a polite or formal title before a man's name or as a standalone term of respect. The same Latin senior also gave us the words 'senior', 'señor', and 'signor', all of which share that ancestral notion of seniority and rank. Because 'sir' is so short and ordinary, its trap is simply that it is heard far more often than it is written, and people occasionally pause over its three plain letters.

How the word is built

• sir (a worn-down form of 'sire', from Latin senior: older, an elder)