provincial

English

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.

Etymology

From Latin provincialis (“province”), confer Provencal.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /pɹɒvinʃəl̩/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Adjective

provincial (comparative more provincial, superlative most provincial)

1. Of or pertaining to province; constituting a province; as, a provincial government; a provincial dialect.
2. Exhibiting the ways or manners of a province; characteristic of the inhabitants of a province.
   • Thomas Babington Macaulay,

     Provincial airs and graces.

3. Not cosmopolitan; countrified; not polished; rude; hence, narrow; illiberal.
   • Ayliffe,
4. Of or pertaining to an ecclesiastical province, or to the jurisdiction of an archbishop; not ecumenical; as, a provincial synod.
5. (obsolete) Of or pertaining to Provence; Provencal.
   • William Shakespeare,

     With two Provincial roses on my razed shoes.

6. limited in outlook; narrow

Translations

of or pertaining to a province

Dutch: provinciaal (nl) German: provinziell (de), provinzial (de)

Spanish: provincial (es) m. and f. Volapük: provinik (vo), (older word, obsolete) plovinik (vo)

Noun

provincial (plural provincials)

1. A person belonging to a province; one who is provincial.
2. (Roman Catholicism) A monastic superior, who, under the general of his order, has the direction of all the religious houses of the same fraternity in a given district, called a province of the order.
   • 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin 2010, p. 700:

     The Franciscan provincial Diego de Landa set up a local Inquisition which unleashed a campaign of interrogation and torture on the Indio population.

3. A country bumpkin.

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French

Pronunciation

• IPA: /pʁɔ.vɛ̃.sjal/, SAMPA: /pRO.vE~.sjal/

Adjective

provincial m. (f. provinciale, m. plural provinciaux, f. plural provinciales)

1. provincial

Related terms

• province
• provincialement
• provincialisme

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Spanish

Adjective

provincial m. and f. (plural provinciales)

1. provincial