Unionist

How to spell unionist

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce unionist

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unionist mean?

1. nounA person who supports the political union of separate states or nations as a single country.
2. nounA member or supporter of a trade union that organises workers collectively.

Unionist in a sentence

• As a committed unionist, she campaigned to keep the four nations together.

• As a lifelong unionist, he believed workers should bargain as one group.

• The unionist argued that splitting the country would weaken its economy.

• The factory unionist led the negotiations over pay and conditions.

Where does unionist come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built from 'union' plus the agent suffix '-ist', which marks a person who advocates or belongs to something. 'Union' itself descends from the Latin unio, meaning 'oneness' or 'a single large pearl', which grew out of unus, the Latin word for 'one'. By the time English adopted 'union' through Old French in the 1400s, the sense had settled on the joining of separate parts into a single whole. The derived 'unionist' appeared in English around the late 1700s and early 1800s, attaching to several political and industrial movements: those who favoured keeping nations or states joined together, and those who organised workers into a single body. The spelling trap is simply that it is 'union' with no extra letters plus a plain '-ist', so resist the urge to double anything.

How the word is built

• union (from Latin unio: oneness, a single thing)
• -ist (one who supports or belongs to)