Word.ws English Dictionary

honourific

honourific is the nonstandard spelling of honorific.

Meaning of honorific

Adjective

honorific (comparative more honorific, superlative most honorific)

  1. Showing or conferring honour and respect.
    • According to Pliny, the custom of setting up honorific statues on columns was a comparably ancient one.1996, T. P. Wiseman, “The Minucii and Their Monument”, in Jerzy Linderski, editor, Imperium Sine Fine: T. Robert S. Broughton and the Roman Republic, Franz Steiner Verlag, →ISBN, page 59
  2. Based on or valuing honor
    • In the honorific cultural process, individuals (especially men) are extremely sensitive to real or perceived insults, and […]2010, Orlando Patterson, “The mechanisms of cultural reproduction: explaining the puzzle of persistence”, in John R. Hall et al., editors, Handbook of Cultural Sociology, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN...

See all 5 meanings of honorific

Forms of honourific

Adjective
comparativemore honourific
superlativemost honourific
Noun
pluralhonourifics

Origin of honourific

From honour + -ific.

Questions about honourific

What is honourific the nonstandard spelling of?
Honourific is the nonstandard spelling of honorific.

Words near honourific in the dictionary

  1. honourees
  2. honourer
  3. honourers
  4. honourest
  5. honoureth
  6. honourific
  7. honourifically
  8. honourifics
  9. honouring
  10. honouring in the breach
  11. honourless

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: honourific (page history and authors); honorific (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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Cite this entry: “honourific.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/honourific. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.