Word.ws English Dictionary

sovereign citizen

sovereign citizen noun: a member of a loose movement of Americans, Canadians and Australians who consider themselves answerable only to their own particular interpretation of the common law, and not subject to any government statutes or proceedings.

Noun (1)

sovereign citizen (plural sovereign citizens)

  1. (conspiracy theories) A member of a loose movement of Americans, Canadians and Australians who consider themselves answerable only to their own particular interpretation of the common law, and not subject to any government statutes or proceedings.
    • An officer from a large metropolitan area said that “militias, neo-Nazis and sovereign citizens” are the biggest threat we face in regard to extremism. […] Last year, for example, a man who identified with the sovereign citizen movement — which claims not to recognize the authority of federal or...2015 June 16, Charles Kurzman, David Schanzer, “The Growing Right-Wing Terror Threat”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 05 Jul 2021
    • That subgroup, known as Rise of the Moors, engaged in a standoff with the police for more than nine hours, claiming that as sovereign citizens, law enforcement had no authority to stop them. No one was injured; 11 people were arrested and charged with unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition...2021 September 26, Sarah Maslin Nir, “She Bought Her Dream Home. Then a ‘Sovereign Citizen’ Changed the Locks.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 02 Dec 2021
    Synonyms:
    sovereign, SovCit, sov
  2. (in plural) The body politic of a nation.
    • The supreme authority remains with the sovereign citizens, and the uncurbed authority of the various branches of government, local, national and federal, extends only to the specific and limited functions which have been conferred upon each by the free consent of hte citizens for their better...1924, Oscar Newfang, The Road to World Peace, page 332
    • In response, the prosecutor made the simple but valuable point that a government of representative democracy cannot function in an atmosphere of deceit – when one branch is lying to another and lying to the sovereign citizens as well.1989 June, William Greider, “What Oliver North's Trial Means to US”, in Rolling Stone, archived from the original on 11 Dec 2017

Noun (2) capitalized: Sovereign Citizen

Sovereign Citizen (plural Sovereign Citizens)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of sovereign citizen.

Examples of sovereign citizen in a sentence

  • There are “homeschoolers (Christian and otherwise), sovereign citizens, weed lovers, and Hillary haters”; domestic abusers, science-deniers, conspiracy theorists, and, above all, addicts.2022 December 8, Judith Shulevitz, “Little House on the Prairie—With Meth”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 08 Dec 2022:
  • They're driven primarily by institutions that we as sovereign citizens created to serve our purposes.2013 January 25, Jim Sleeper, Daniel J. H. Greenwood, “To Stop Gun Violence, We Need to Remember We Can Regulate Corporate Speech and...

Synonyms of sovereign citizen

Forms of sovereign citizen

pluralsovereign citizens
pluralSovereign Citizens

Questions about sovereign citizen

What does sovereign citizen mean?
Sovereign citizen means a member of a loose movement of Americans, Canadians and Australians who consider themselves answerable only to their own particular interpretation of the common law, and not subject to any government statutes or proceedings.
How do you use sovereign citizen in a sentence?
There are “homeschoolers (Christian and otherwise), sovereign citizens, weed lovers, and Hillary haters”; domestic abusers, science-deniers, conspiracy theorists, and, above all, addicts.
What part of speech is sovereign citizen?
Sovereign citizen is a noun.
What is the plural of sovereign citizen?
The plural of sovereign citizen is sovereign citizens.

Words near sovereign citizen in the dictionary

  1. soveraigns
  2. soveraigntie
  3. sovereign
  4. sovereign bond
  5. sovereign bonds
  6. sovereign citizen
  7. sovereign citizens
  8. sovereign debt
  9. sovereign debts
  10. sovereign immunities
  11. sovereign immunity

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sovereign citizen (page history and authors); Sovereign Citizen (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: “sovereign citizen.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sovereign_citizen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.