regnant - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Adjective
regnant (not comparable)
- Reigning, ruling; currently holding power. [from 15th c.]
- ✤ The people are now the State, their will is the regnant will, and that will has this characteristic — it loves principles, it hates compromises; and the principles it loves must be regulative, fit to be applied to the work and guidance of life.1
- Dominant; holding sway; having particular power or influence. [from 17th c.]
- ✤ The doors of his temples were kept open in time of war, the time in which the ideas of contradiction and conflict are most naturally regnant.2
- (postpositive) of a monarch, ruling in one’s own right; often contrasted with consort and dowager
- ✤ Queen Elizabeth II reigned as queen regnant, unlike her mother Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.
Noun
regnant (plural regnants)
- (obsolete) A sovereign or ruler.
- ✤ Here are two sovereigns in the land, a regnant and a claimant—that is enough of one good thing—but if any one wants more, he may find a king in every peel-house in the country; so if we lack government, it is not for lack of governors— […]3
Etymology
From Middle English regnant, reignant, from Middle French regnant, régnant, and its source, Latin rēgnāns, the present participle of regnāre.
Pronunciation
- (UK) IPA: /ˈɹɛɡnənt/
- Audio (Southern England): 🔊
- Rhymes: -ɛɡnənt
Printed 2026-09-04.
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Footnotes
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1910, A. M. Fairbairn, Studies in Religion and Theology, page 99: ↩
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2010, Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22, Atlantic, published 2011, page 7: ↩
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1820, [Walter Scott], chapter XI, in The Abbot. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Company, and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, page 339: ↩