Spaniard

How to spell spaniard

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce spaniard

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does spaniard mean?

1. nounA native or citizen of Spain.

Spaniard in a sentence

• Every spaniard at the conference spoke warmly about their home city.

• The tour guide, a proud spaniard from Seville, knew every back street.

Where does spaniard come from?

Language of origin: French

This word names a native or inhabitant of Spain, and it reached English in the late 1300s from the Old French Espaignart, which combined Espaigne, the French name for Spain, with the noun-forming ending -ard used to mark a person belonging to a place. The deeper root is the Latin Hispania, the Roman name for the Iberian peninsula, whose own origin is uncertain and may come from an older Phoenician or Punic term. The single 'n' is the usual stumbling block: writers expecting a doubled consonant after the short vowel, as in 'manner' or 'banner', sometimes slip in a second 'n', but the word keeps just one. The -iard ending is also unusual in English, since most nationality nouns end in -ish, -an, or -ese, which makes the spelling feel foreign. It is conventionally written with a capital letter as 'Spaniard' because it is a proper national term.

How the word is built

• span- (from Spain, ultimately Latin Hispania)
• -iard (noun suffix denoting a person, from Old French -ard)