Provincial

Pronunciation

• IPA: /pɹɒvinʃəlÌ©/

Origin

From Latin provincialis ("province"), confer Provencal.

Full definition of provincial

Adjective

1. Of or pertaining to province; constituting a province; as, a provincial government; a provincial dialect.
2. Exhibiting the ways or manners of a province; characteristic of the inhabitants of a province.
• Thomas Babington Macaulay,Provincial airs and graces.
3. Not cosmopolitan; countrified; not polished; rude; hence, narrow; illiberal.
• Ayliffe,
4. Of or pertaining to an ecclesiastical province, or to the jurisdiction of an archbishop; not ecumenical; as, a provincial synod.
5. (obsolete) Of or pertaining to Provence; Provencal.
• William Shakespeare,With two Provincial roses on my razed shoes.
6. limited in outlook; narrow

Noun

1. A person belonging to a province; one who is provincial.
2. (Roman Catholicism) 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.
• 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin 2010, p. 700:The Franciscan provincial Diego de Landa set up a local Inquisition which unleashed a campaign of interrogation and torture on the Indio population.
3. A country bumpkin.----