Throne

How to spell throne

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce throne

What does throne mean?

1. nounThe ceremonial chair occupied by a monarch, or by extension the office and authority of a sovereign.

Throne in a sentence

• The queen sat on the golden throne during the coronation.

• The prince will inherit the throne when his father abdicates.

Where does throne come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Greek thronos, which simply meant a high seat or elevated chair, the kind reserved for a person of rank or for a god in a temple. It passed into Latin as thronus and then into Old French as trone, the form English first borrowed in the early 1200s, originally spelled without its 'h'. The 'h' was later restored in writing to mirror the classical Greek and Latin spelling, which is why the modern word keeps an 'h' that the pronunciation completely ignores. From the literal sense of a ceremonial chair, the word grew to stand for royal or divine authority itself, so that 'the throne' can mean the monarchy as an institution. That silent 'h' and the spoken sameness with 'thrown', the past participle of 'throw', are the two traps that make this short word slip up confident adult writers.

How the word is built

• thron- (from Greek thronos: high seat, chair of state)
• silent -e