prince
//pɹɪns//
Forms
- Plural
- princes
Definitions
1.Someone who is preeminent in their field; a great person.
- He is a prince among men.
- In some respects the intellectual is indeed closer to the philosopher than to any specialist, and the philosopher is in more than one sense a sort of prince among the intellectuals.
2.The (male) ruler or head of a principality.
- He is the prince who never grew up – a one-time playboy and son of the Hollywood star Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco.
3.A male member of a royal family other than the ruler; especially (in the United Kingdom) the son or grandson of the monarch.
4.A non-royal high title of nobility, especially in France and the Holy Roman Empire.
- Prince Louis de Broglie won the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- Conspiracy theories are always enticing: one I was involved with in the 50s was about Mayerling, the 19th-century Austrian scandal involving a prince’s lover who died in dodgy circumstances in a hunting lodge.
Frequency
Overall
Uncommon· #2502
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Rare
- General reading & writing
- Uncommon
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Rare
Related words
Word family
Etymology
From Middle English prince, from Anglo-Norman prince, from Latin prīnceps (“first head”), from prīmus (“first”) + capiō (“seize, take”). Cognate with Old English fruma (“prince, ruler”). Doublet of princeps and principe.