stadtholder
Syllables: stadt·hold·erUK/ˈstædˌhəʊldə/US/ˈstætˌhoʊldɚ/
stadtholder noun: the chief provincial magistrate, military commander, and, as a member of the House of Orange, highest-ranking noble in the Dutch Republic, who often served as a de facto head of state alongside the States General; the position became hereditary in 1747.
Noun
stadtholder (plural stadtholders)
- The chief provincial magistrate, military commander, and, as a member of the House of Orange, highest-ranking noble in the Dutch Republic, who often served as a de facto head of state alongside the States General; the position became hereditary in 1747
- In keeping with the decentralization principe, each province had, in any case, to appoint its own Stadholder, who might not necessarily be the same prince of Orange, or stem from the dynastic trunk. (…) Sovereignty, it was affirmed, lay with the States General, whose bidding the Stadholder was to...1988, Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: an Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, Berkeley: University of California Press, pages 64-65
- For decades, no stadtholder who would counterbalance the power of the Amsterdam regents had been appointed.2001 [1999], Geert Mak, translated by Philipp Blom, Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City, Vintage, page 150
- An office formerly held by Danish and Swedish officials, best translated as governor-general.
Forms of stadtholder
| plural | stadtholders |
|---|---|
| alternative form | stadholder |
| alternative form | stadhouder |
Origin of stadtholder
Partial calque of Dutch stadthouder (superseded), stadhouder (literally “placeholder”), from Middle Dutch stathouder, itself a calque of Medieval Latin locum tenēns. Doublet of locum tenens and lieutenant.
Words formed from stadtholder
Questions about stadtholder
- What does stadtholder mean?
- Stadtholder means the chief provincial magistrate, military commander, and, as a member of the House of Orange, highest-ranking noble in the Dutch Republic, who often served as a de facto head of state alongside the States General; the position became hereditary in 1747.
- What part of speech is stadtholder?
- Stadtholder is a noun.
- How do you pronounce stadtholder?
- Stadtholder is pronounced /ˈstædˌhəʊldə/ (UK).
- What is the plural of stadtholder?
- The plural of stadtholder is stadtholders.
Words near stadtholder in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: stadtholder (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: “stadtholder.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stadtholder. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.