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spain

UK/speɪn/US/speɪn/
nounA1Very common — you will meet it every day · #2,337 of 15,258leans written

Spain is the country of Madrid, flamenco, and paella. Travel to Spain, the king of Spain, southern Spain.

It has four official languages, and Catalan, Galician and Basque are co-official in their own regions — Basque is unrelated to any other language on earth. Paella is Valencian rather than national, and Spaniards will tell you so. Madrid is the highest capital in Europe.

Antonio Valdés y Fernández Bazán · Public domain

Definitions of spain

  1. 1nounspainA country in south-western Europe.A1

    “Madrid is the capital of Spain, and Barcelona is its second-largest city.”

spain is a country.

Where it comes from

  1. Middle English

    Spayne

  2. English

    Spain

  3. English, today

    spain

Spain comes from Middle English Spayne. From Middle English Spayne, from Anglo-Norman Espayne, from Latin Spania, from earlier Latin Hispānia. Displaced Ispania, which was borrowed directly from Latin. a doublet of Hispania.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Countries & Flags

Practise this word

spain in the wild

  • The colonies of Spain and Portugal, for example, give more real encouragement to the industry of other countries than to that of Spain and Portugal.

    An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations· Adam Smith

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.