Regne

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. Supreme royal authority over a kingdom or territory ; the length of time a sovereign holds power ; to hold the throne and govern as a monarch
2. The authority a king or queen exercises over a realm ; the span of years during which a ruler sits on the throne ; to govern as a sovereign with supreme power
3. Sovereign power held over a land by its ruler ; the stretch of time one monarch remains in office ; to be the crowned ruler who wields authority over subjects

Etymology: "Regne" is the Middle English and Old French form of what became "reign," borrowed into English in the 13th century. Its ancestor is Latin "regnum," meaning "kingship" or "royal rule" or "kingdom," built from "rex" (king) plus a noun-forming suffix. The Latin root "reg-" meaning "to rule" or "to direct in a straight line" also gave English "regent," "regal," and "rule" itself, so the word is closely related to a whole family of governing terms. The English spelling "regne" was used in Middle English, and the modern spelling "reign" arrived later, partly through an influence from the Latin "regnum" and partly through a spelling change that made the word look more like its source. Because the Old French form was "regne," the spelling "regne" is a real historical form rather than a mistake. The meaning of "reign" has shifted in a useful way: the earliest sense was the realm or kingdom itself, and only later did it come to mean the period of a ruler's authority, then the act of ruling.