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provincial

/pɹəˈvɪn(t)ʃəl/adjective, noun

provincial is spelled P-R-O-V-I-N-C-I-A-L. The wrong spelling people search most is provicial: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 105 of all searches for the word. Provincial is an adjective meaning “Of or pertaining to a province”.

How many letters and syllables are in provincial?

Letters10: P-R-O-V-I-N-C-I-A-L
Syllables3 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing12 times per million words; the 6,230th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched2; the most searched, provicial, about 20 Bing searches a month (all of them)

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).

How do you spell provincial?

Provincial is spelled P-R-O-V-I-N-C-I-A-L. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 70 of the searches for provincial in either form.

provincialthe right spelling2,080 searches a month
proviciala missing n20 searches a month
provinicialan extra i10 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is provincial?

Provincial appears 12 times per million words in written English, the 6,230th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce provincial?

  • US /pɹəˈvɪn(t)ʃəl/

Provincial has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-provincial.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of provincial

  • more provincial comparative
  • most provincial superlative
  • provincials plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does provincial mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

adjective

  1. 1

    Of or pertaining to a province.

    a provincial government

  2. 2

    Constituting a province.

  3. 3

    Exhibiting the ways or manners of a province; characteristic of the inhabitants of a province.

  4. 4

    Not cosmopolitan; limited in outlook; narrow; illiberal.

  5. 5

    Backwoodsy, hick, yokelish, countrified; not polished; rude.

  6. 6

    Of or pertaining to an ecclesiastical province, or to the jurisdiction of an archbishop; not ecumenical.

    a provincial synod

noun

  1. 1

    A person belonging to a province; one who is provincial.

  2. 2

    A monastic superior, who, under the general of his order, has the direction of all the religious houses of the same fraternity in a given district, called a province of the order.

  3. 3

    obsoleteA constitution issued by the head of an ecclesiastical province.

  4. 4

    A country bumpkin.

adjective

as Provincial
  1. 1

    obsoleteOf or pertaining to Provence; Provençal.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you abbreviate provincial?

Wiktionary records one abbreviation of provincial: FPT.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Provincial in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchprovincial (of or pertaining to a province)
Germanprovinziell, provinzial (of or pertaining to a province)
Portugueseprovincial (of or pertaining to a province), interiorano, provinciano (exhibiting the ways or manners of a province)
Spanishprovincial (of or pertaining to a province), provinciano (exhibiting the ways or manners of a province), paleto (not cosmopolitan or polished)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does provincial come from?

From Middle English provincial, from Old French provincial, from Latin prōvinciālis (“of a province”), equivalent to province + -ial.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after provincial