Sultan

How to spell sultan

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sultan

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sultan mean?

1. nounA sovereign ruler in certain Muslim countries, especially historically.

Sultan in a sentence

• The sultan ruled the empire from a vast palace in the capital.

• Oil revenue allowed the sultan to fund new schools and hospitals.

Where does sultan come from?

Language of origin: Arabic

The word comes from the Arabic sulṭān, which originally meant 'power', 'authority', or 'rule' in the abstract before it came to mean the person who wields that power. The term grew into a formal title used by Muslim sovereigns, especially within the Ottoman and earlier Seljuk states, where the sultan held supreme temporal authority. English picked it up in the late 1300s, travelling in through Medieval Latin (sultanus) and Old French, at a time when European writers were keenly aware of the powerful rulers to the east. A related Arabic sense survives in 'sultana', used both for a sultan's wife or female relative and, more familiarly today, for a pale seedless raisin. The spelling has stayed remarkably close to the Arabic original, so the only real trap is the unstressed final vowel, written 'a' even though it sounds like a faint 'uh'.

How the word is built

• sultan (from Arabic sulṭān: ruler, authority, power); a single unanalysable root in English