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honorific

UK/ˌɒnəˈɹɪfɪk/US/ˌɑːnəˈɹɪfɪk/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #15,066 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: honorifics

An honorific is a title or word used to show respect. Use the honorific, drop the honorifics, an honorific title.

English has few and uses them lightly: doctor, professor, sir. Japanese and Korean build them into the grammar, so choosing the wrong one is not merely rude but ungrammatical, and learners find that the hardest part of either language.

Definitions of honorific

  1. 1nounhonorificA title or word used to show respect.C1

    “Guests should use the honorific 'Your Majesty' when they first speak to the queen.”

honorific is a title.

Where it comes from

  1. Latin

    honor

  2. Old French

    honor

  3. Anglo-Norman

    honour

  4. Middle English

    honour

  5. English

    honor

  6. English, today

    honorific

Built from

  • mense · English — property, civility, etc.
  • honuren · Middle English — to honor

From honor + -ific. honor comes from Middle English honour, honor, honur, from Anglo-Norman honour, honur, from Old French honor, from Latin honor. Displaced native Old English hād and Middle English menske (“honor, dignity among men”) (though survived in descendant mense (“property, civility, etc.”)), from Old Norse menskr (“honor”). The verb is from Middle English honouren, honuren (“to honor”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

honorific in the wild

  • While Sri is also used in Tamil, the true equivalent honorific is Tiru.

    Shri

  • "Shri" is also used as a title of veneration for deities or as honorific title for individuals.

    Shri

  • Sheikh is an honorific title in the Arabic language, literally meaning "elder".

    Sheikh

  • The terms Don (in Spanish and Italian), Dom (in Portuguese), and Domn (in Romanian), are honorific prefixes derived from the Latin Dominus, meaning "lord" or "owner".

    Don (honorific)

  • Japanese honorific titles, often simply called honorifics, consist of suffixes and prefixes when referring to others in a conversation.

    Honorific speech in Japanese

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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.

Related words

the honor family

honor

honorific — used about once every 159,543 pages · #15,066 · point at the bar for the others

  • honorary