Main Entry: ¹con·stit·u·ent

Pronunciation: \-wənt, -ənt\

Function: noun

Etymology: French constituant, from Middle French, from present participle of constituer to constitute, from Latin constituere

Date: 1622

1 : one who authorizes another to act as agent : principal
2 : a member of a constituency
3 : an essential part : component, element
4 : a structural unit of a definable syntactic, semantic, or phonological category that consists of one or more linguistic elements (as words, morphemes, or features) and that can occur as a component of a larger construction

synonyms see element