Other forms: states
A state is a country or one of its regions, and also the condition something is in. The British state, the state of Ohio, in a bad state.
The political sense covers both a sovereign country and a component of a federation, which is why the United States has fifty of them and the world has fewer than two hundred. The condition sense is everyday: the state of the roads, in a state, state of mind. As a verb, to state is to say formally. Note state school; state of the art; and that state and status are the same Latin word.
1nounstateA country or one of its regions.~98%
“About fifty states make up that federation.”
2nounconditionThe condition something is in.~2%
“Your bedroom is in a terrible state; please tidy it up.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 9 sentences found in the wild and placed 9 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
state is a polity or a condition.
Latin status means a manner of standing, from stare, to stand. Statue, statute, station and estate come from the same standing.
Proto-Indo-European
*steh₂-
Middle English
stat
English, today
state
Built from
From Middle English stat. From Middle English stat (as a noun); adopted c. 1200 from both Old French estat and Latin stātus (“manner of standing, attitude, position, carriage, manner, dress, apparel; and other senses”), from stō (“to stand”). a doublet of estate and status. The sense of "polity" develops in the 14th century. Compare French être, Greek στέω, Italian stare, Portuguese estar, Romanian sta, and Spanish estar. The verb is first attested around the beginning of the 16th century. Related to English stand. Displaced native Old English hād (“state, condition”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA