constituent
/kənˈstɪtjuənt/
constituent adjective: being a part or component of a whole.
Adjective
constituent (not comparable)
- Being a part or component of a whole.
- Body, soul, and reason are the three parts necessarily constituent of a man.1695, C[harles] A[lphonse] du Fresnoy, translated by John Dryden, De Arte Graphica. The Art of Painting, […], London: […] J[ohn] Heptinstall for W. Rogers, […], →OCLC
- Constitutive or constituting.
- The skeleton varies in the proportions, and even to a certain extent in the connexions, of its constituent bones.1863, Thomas Henry Huxley, Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature, London: Williams and Norgate, page 143
- In the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, three of the Soviet Union's fifteen constituent republics, last year's most dangerous fantasies have been sanctioned by the government itself.1989 May, Priit J. Vesilind, “The Baltic: Arena of Power”, in National Geographic, volume 175, number 5, page 604
- Authorized to make a constitution.
- the Constituent Assembly
- A question of right arises between the constituent and representative body.1769, Junius, letter on 19 December, 1769, (part of Letters of Junius)
Noun
constituent (plural constituents)
- A part, or component of a whole.
- We know how to bring these constituents together, and to cause them to form water.1865, John Tyndall, The Constitution of the Universe, published 1869, page 11
- Just as a regiment is ultimately made up of soldiers, so the sentence is of morphemes—they are its ultimate constituents.1970, Thomas Pyles, John Algeo, English: An Introduction to Language, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, page 135
- A person or thing which constitutes, determines, or constructs.
- whose first composure and origination requires a higher and nobler Constituent than either Chance or the ordinary method of meer Natural causes.a. 1677 (date written), Matthew Hale, The Primitive Origination of Mankind, Considered and Examined According to the Light of Nature, London: […] William Godbid, for William Shrowsbery, […]...
- A resident of an area represented by an elected official, particularly in relation to that official.
- The candidate himself, the son and heir of a peer, feels that he is truly of the same flesh and blood as his constituents; how amiably he smiles!—how bland are his manners!—and with what cordiality does he shake hands with the greasiest and the worst!1835, James Fenimore Cooper, The Monikins, volume 1, Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, & Blanchard, pages 75–76
- He had been chief justice of Chester when Delamere, then Mr. Booth, represented that county in parliament. Booth had bitterly complained to the Commons that the dearest interests of his constituents were intrusted to a drunken jackpudding.1849, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James II, volume II, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC, page 40
- A voter who supports a (political) candidate; a supporter of a cause.
- But he [Joe Biden] believes that non-college-educated voters, the neglected constituents he wants to take back from the Republicans, hardly know about the big bills emanating from Washington with banal names.2023 January 19, Franklin Foer, “How Joe Biden Wins Again”, in The Atlantic
- One who appoints another to act for him as attorney in fact.
- A functional element of a phrase or clause.
- Thus, the postulation of a Noun Phrase constituent is justified on morphological grounds, since it is not obvious how we could describe the grammar of the genitive s inflection in English without saying that it's a Noun Phrase inflection.1988, Andrew Radford, Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 65
- In the first bracketting^([sic]), old and men are constituents of an intermediate unit old men, and in the second, men, and and women are similarly the constituents of men and women. The units are made up directly of these words: therefore these are, more precisely, their immediate constituents.1993, Peter Matthews, “Central Concepts of Syntax”, in Joachim Jacobs, Arnim von Stechow, Wolfgang Sternefeld, Theo Vennemann, editors, Syntax, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 95
constituent meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali
constituent in Hindi
- constituent, fundamental
- इमारती imāratī
constituent in Tamil
- கூறு, ஆக்கக் கூறு, ஆக்கக்கூறு, இயைபு உறுப்பு, மூலக் கூறு, அங்கம்
constituent in Urdu
- بنیادی, قانون ساز, ضروری
constituent in Bengali
- constituent, ingredient
- সম্ভার śombhar
More languagesFewer languages
- constituent in Malayalam
- ഘടകമായ, അംശമായ, തിരഞ്ഞെടുക്കുന്ന, ഘടകം
- constituent in Kannada
- ಕಡಿಗೆ, ಮತದಾರ, ಚುನಾವಣೆದಾರ, ಚುನಾವಣಾ ಕ್ಷೇತ್ರದ ಸದಸ್ಯ
- constituent in Arabic
- مُكَوِّن mukawwin
- constituent in Malay
- juzuk, unsur
- constituent in Indonesian
- konstituen
Examples of constituent in a sentence
- The senator observed that the bill would be detrimental to his constituents.
- The pathological liar was morally inferior to his much nicer constituents.
- A polythetic taxon is one where the constituent organisms share a large number of characteristics.
Forms of constituent
| plural | constituents |
|---|
Origin of constituent
From Latin cōnstituēns, present participle of cōnstituō (“to establish”), from com- (“together”) + statuō (“to set, place, establish”).
Words formed from constituent
Phrases with constituent
Questions about constituent
- What does constituent mean?
- Constituent means being a part or component of a whole.
- What is constituent in Hindi?
- Constituent in Hindi is इमारती (imāratī). See Constituent meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is constituent?
- Constituent can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce constituent?
- Constituent is pronounced /kənˈstɪtjuənt/.
Words near constituent in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: constituent (page history and authors); इमारती (Hindi) (page history and authors); constituent (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); constituent (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); সম্ভার (Bengali) (page history and authors); constituent (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); constituent (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-constituent.ogg, en-us-constituent.ogg.
Cite this entry: “constituent.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/constituent. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.