I sometimes come across words I don’t know the meaning of (“No”, for example), and rather than moving on with my day, I like to figure out what they mean. In this installment of “Etymology Rocks”, we have the word “Suzerain”.

I no doubt came across this word while reading about conquering of some sort, because the definition is as follows, according to Dictionary.com:

Suzerain [soo-zuh-rin]:
-noun
1. a sovereign or a state exercising political control over a dependent state.

The American Heritage Dictionary traces the word back to Old French (suserain), so it must be left over from a long forgotten time when the French may have been in a position to control something, and needed a way to express it.

Although the potential application of this word in your everyday life is limited, for those of you with friends named “Susan”, you may find that the word provides a new, confusing, and generally inappropriate nickname for her. I have a 2nd cousin with that name which no one in my family has talked to in years, but I’m thinking about re-establishing contact with her just for the material…