Loading page
say it: pruh-VIN-shuhl
provincial is a noun and adjective meaning "(Roman Catholic Church) an official in charge of an ecclesiastical province acting under the superior general of a religious order". It carries 4 recorded senses.
(Roman Catholic Church) an official in charge of an ecclesiastical province acting under the superior general of a religious order
“the general of the Jesuits receives monthly reports from the provincials”
Roman Catholic
of or associated with a province
“provincial government”
characteristic of the provinces or their people
“deeply provincial and conformist”
“in that well-educated company I felt uncomfortably provincial”
“narrow provincial attitudes”
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 provincial 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.