Statehood

How to spell statehood

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce statehood

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does statehood mean?

1. nounThe status or condition of being a recognised state, especially a member of a federation or an independent nation.

Statehood in a sentence

• The territory campaigned for decades before it finally achieved statehood.

• The referendum asked voters whether the region should pursue full statehood.

Where does statehood come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word joins two parts of very different ages. The first element, 'state', came into English in the 1200s from the Latin 'status', meaning 'a standing, position, or condition', which itself grew from the verb 'stare', 'to stand'; over the centuries 'state' narrowed toward its political sense of an organised body of people under one government. The second element, '-hood', is a native Old English suffix, '-had', which once existed as a free-standing word meaning 'person, rank, condition, or quality', and survives now only as a suffix in words such as 'childhood', 'neighbourhood', and 'brotherhood'. Welded together, 'statehood' literally names the condition of being a state, and it is a comparatively recent coinage, recorded from the 1800s, especially in American usage as territories sought admission to the Union. The spelling trap is the silent join between the two parts: writers must keep the full 'state' and add 'hood' cleanly, resisting any urge to drop the central 'e'.

How the word is built

• state (a politically organised territory)
• -hood (Old English -had: condition or status of being)