Skopje

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The capital and largest city of North Macedonia, located on the Vardar River in the Balkans
2. A city in the Balkans that serves as the capital of the Republic of North Macedonia on the Vardar River
3. The principal city and seat of government of North Macedonia, situated in the Vardar valley of southeastern Europe

Etymology: Skopje is the capital of North Macedonia, and its name is a Macedonian spelling of the Macedonian city name Скопје. The name comes from a Slavic root, and the city has been called by variants of it for centuries, long before the modern country existed. The English spelling simply transliterates the Macedonian letters into Latin script, so the word is a transliteration rather than a term with its own separate English history. The Macedonian form is the one used locally, and English adopted it as the official spelling of the city's name in the modern era. Readers who know the older English form "Uskub," which came from Ottoman Turkish, will see it as the same place under a different script and language tradition.