sovereign
Americannoun
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a monarch; a king, queen, or other supreme ruler.
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a person who has supreme power or authority.
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a group or body of persons or a state having sovereign authority.
- Synonyms:
- government
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a gold coin of the United Kingdom, equal to one pound sterling: went out of circulation after 1914.
adjective
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belonging to or characteristic of a sovereign or sovereign authority; royal.
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having supreme rank, power, or authority.
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supreme; preeminent; indisputable.
a sovereign right.
- Synonyms:
- predominant, principal, paramount, chief
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greatest in degree; utmost or extreme.
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being above all others in character, importance, excellence, etc.
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efficacious; potent.
a sovereign remedy.
noun
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a person exercising supreme authority, esp a monarch
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a former British gold coin worth one pound sterling
adjective
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supreme in rank or authority
a sovereign lord
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excellent or outstanding
a sovereign remedy
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of, relating to, or characteristic of a sovereign
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independent of outside authority
a sovereign state
Other Word Forms
- nonsovereign noun
- nonsovereignly adverb
- quasi-sovereign adjective
- sovereignly adverb
- subsovereign noun
- supersovereign adjective
- undersovereign noun
- unsovereign adjective
Etymology
Origin of sovereign
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English soverain, altered by influence of reign, from Old French soverain, from Vulgar Latin superānus (unrecorded), equivalent to Latin super- super- + -ānus -an
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It does not apply to persons who are not subject to US jurisdiction -- foreign diplomats, for example, and sovereign Native American tribes.
From Barron's
The older cases and treatises turned not simply on place of birth, but on protection, allegiance and the sovereign’s acceptance of the parents’ presence.
Renting out hardware will also allow Oracle to expand into higher-margin niches such as sovereign cloud, which involves building localized data centers for national governments.
From MarketWatch
Local media described Freeman as a conspiracy theorist and member of the so-called "sovereign citizen" movement, which falsely believes it is not subject to the law.
From Barron's
Today it is a Russian “exclave,” with Lithuania to its north and Poland to its south—sovereign Russian territory noncontiguous to Mother Russia.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.