sovereign
Americannoun
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sovereigns
plural
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a monarch; a king, queen, or other supreme ruler.
-
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.
-
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
Derived Forms
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nonsovereignnoun
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subsovereignnoun
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undersovereignnoun
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quasi-sovereignadjective
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supersovereignadjective
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unsovereignadjective
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nonsovereignlyadverb
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sovereignlyadverb
Inflected Forms
Nouns
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
Explanation
Put simply, your sovereign is your king or queen. George III was the sovereign of Great Britain and her colonies — including the American ones. At least he was until a little thing called the Revolutionary War upset everything. Sovereign as an adjective can be used to indicate the ultimate power of a state, whether a monarchy or not, as in "Peru exercised its sovereign rights to all minerals within its borders." A sovereign is also a British gold coin with a face value of one pound sterling (with the monarch's face on it). But don't sell it for a pound, because it's worth its weight in gold — quite literally — which is a lot more than a pound is worth.
Vocabulary lists containing sovereign
"On Women's Right to Vote" by Susan B. Anthony
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American Born Chinese
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Chains
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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.
See Examples For:
Customers can either download the model to their own servers, or access it via Mistral's infrastructure, including in "our European sovereign region where data stays under EU jurisdiction to ensure data remains under their control".
From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026
Etihad is owned by sovereign wealth fund L'Imad which is chaired by the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, the son of the UAE president.
From BBC ● Oct. 1, 2026
Britain made its sovereign debt Parliament’s obligation rather than the king’s, and began publishing fiscal data.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 29, 2026
This argument would essentially function as a variation on the so-called dormant commerce clause by inferring implied constitutional constraints on states’ sovereign powers.
From Slate ● Sep. 29, 2026
Today they speak back, as individuals and as sovereign nations, against ongoing trauma and the consequences of conquest and terminal narratives.
From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Normally a potential reluctance among those three sovereigns to buy U.S.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 20, 2026
These developments don’t threaten dollar dominance today or tomorrow, but they reflect a genuine, if gradual, de-risking impulse among sovereigns who have concluded that some diversification away from dollar concentration is prudent.
From Barron's ● May 27, 2026
One-time “fragile five” sovereigns like South Africa or Turkey have gotten their houses substantially in order in recent years.
From Barron's ● Apr. 20, 2026
The country’s Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said Friday that the country wouldn’t rule out any options to counter the yen’s recent sharp falls, supporting Japanese sovereigns but hitting exporters.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 16, 2026
Through the sound of the shivering glass I could hear the “ting” of the gold, as some of the sovereigns fell on the flagging.
From "Dracula" by Bram Stoker
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.
