Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

denizen

UK/ˈdɛn.ɪ.zən/US/ˈdɛn ə zən/
nounC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,681 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: denizens

A denizen is an inhabitant of a particular place. Denizens of the deep, a denizen of the bar, the forest's denizens.

It is used with a light touch, and denizens of somewhere is nearly always slightly amused. In old English law a denizen was a foreigner granted some rights of a subject, which is a real and forgotten status.

Swaroop Singha Roy · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of denizen

  1. 1noundenizenAn inhabitant of a particular place.C2

    “Owls and foxes are the night-time denizens of the park.”

denizen is an inhabitant.

Where it comes from

Old French denzein comes from Latin de intus, from within.

  1. Latin

    dē intus — from within

  2. Old French

    denzein

  3. Middle English

    denisein

  4. English, today

    denizen

From Middle English denisein, from Old French denzein, from deinz + -ein, from Latin dē intus (“from within”), whence French dans.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

denizen in the wild

  • The denizen was neither a subject (with citizenship or nationality) nor an alien, but had a status akin to permanent residency today.

    Denization

  • The status of denizen allowed a foreigner to purchase property, although a denizen could not inherit property.

    Denization

  • Rapp) was an influential denizen of Andy Warhol's The Factory and was sometimes referred to as "The Mayor".

    Rotten Rita

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.