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say it: NAY-shuhn
nation is a noun meaning "a politically organized body of people under a single government". It carries 4 recorded senses.
a politically organized body of people under a single government
“the state has elected a new president”
“African nations”
“students who had come to the nation's capitol”
“the country's largest manufacturer”
“an industrialized land”
United States prohibitionist who raided saloons and destroyed bottles of liquor with a hatchet (1846-1911)
a federation of tribes (especially Native American tribes)
“the Shawnee nation”
United States
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for nation come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.