state

Pronunciation

• IPA: /steɪt/^[1][2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English stat,^[3][4] borrowed from Latin status (“manner of standing, position, condition”),^[4][5] partly through Old French estat, and partly a shortened form of estate.^[6][7][8] The Latin word is a noun of action from the past participle stem of stāre (“to stand”),^[5][3] from Proto-Indo-European *sta- (“to stand”).^[5][9] Its political senses came from Latin phrases such as status reī pūblicae (“condition of the republic”).^[10][11] State is a doublet of estate and status.^[11][9] The verb is from the noun.^[4][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Position in society, station; circumstances or condition (probably before 1200, in Ancrene Riwle).^[11][5]

Semantic evolution

From the sense of a person's condition and standing came, by the early 14th century, the pomp and dignity befitting high rank, hence keep state (1590s) and lie in state (1705).^[5] The meanings “physical condition” and “stage or phase” date from about 1300,^[5] a mental or emotional condition from the 1530s, and the colloquial “agitated condition”, such as in a state, from 1837.^[5][12][13] The political sense grew out of the condition of a country with regard to its government (late 13th century);^[5] Barnhart dates the sense of a nation's government to about 1300,^[4] Etymonline the body politic to the 1530s.^[5] In the 17th century a state could also be a republic, as opposed to a monarchy,^[14][15] and older writers used it for a canopied chair of state.^[14][16] The sense of one of the states of a federation is first recorded in Jefferson's writings (1774), though the British colonies in North America were occasionally called states from the 1630s.^[11][5] The verb first meant “to place, station” (in Marlowe, about 1590);^[11] the sense “to declare in words” dates from the 1640s, from the idea of placing the words on record.^[5][4]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – rank, station; condition.^[4][5]
• c. 1300 – physical condition or phase; the government of a nation.^[5][4]
• early 14th century – pomp, dignity.^[5]
• 1530s – a mental condition; the body politic.^[5]
• c. 1590 – verb, to place, station.^[11][17]
• 1647 – verb, to declare in words.^[4]
• 1705 – lie in state.^[5]
• 1749 – state of mind.^[12][5]
• 1774 – a member of a federation.^[4][5]
• 1837 – an agitated condition.^[12][5]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The condition of a person or thing at a given time: a state of confusion.
2. A mental or emotional condition, or (informal) an agitated or untidy condition: in a state.
3. (physics) The physical condition of a system, such as solid, liquid or gas, or a definite energy condition of an atom.
4. Social position or rank; the pomp that goes with high rank: to lie in state.
5. A nation or territory organized as a political community under one government; its government.
6. One of the self-governing units of a federation, such as the United States.
7. The civil government, as opposed to the church: church and state.

Verb

1. To express in words; to declare or set out fully.
2. To fix or specify by authority: at stated times.

Adjective

1. Of or relating to a state or its government; run by the state.
2. Used for or involving ceremony: a state visit.

Word family

• statable
• all-state
• antistate
• bistate
• costate
• counterstate
• downstate
• interstate

Related words

• estate
• statistics
• status
• stand
• stately
• statement

Usage notes

State and condition are the most general words for the way a person or thing is, and are often interchangeable;^[18] situation is narrower, the condition at a given time as set by circumstances, and status refers to standing.^[18][10] As a verb, state is stronger than say, implying that something is put forward as fact;^[2] William Cullen Bryant listed it, as a synonym of say, among the words banned in his style guide for the New York Evening Post.^[2]

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
3. ^ a b Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House
11. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
12. ^ a b c Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ Dalzell, Tom; Victor, Terry, eds. (2013), The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd ed., London: Routledge
14. ^ a b Trench, Richard Chenevix (1859), A Select Glossary of English Words Used Formerly in Senses Different from Their Present, London: John W. Parker
15. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
16. ^ Skeat, Walter W.; Mayhew, A. L. (1914), A Glossary of Tudor and Stuart Words, Oxford: Clarendon Press
17. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
18. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin