# roman

Pronunciation: say "ROH-muhn" US /ˈɹoʊ.mən/, UK /ˈɹəʊmən/

## Adjective · Roman

1. Belonging to, coming from, or relating to the Roman Empire.
   - Simple: From or belonging to the Roman Empire of long ago.
   - _Roman legions guarded the northern frontier for centuries._
   - _Archaeologists found the remains of a Roman villa beneath a farm in southern England._
2. Coming from, belonging to, or relating to the city of Rome.
   - Simple: From the city of Rome, or having to do with it.
   - _The film follows a Roman family through one long, sweltering August._
   - _Roman restaurants are known for simple pasta dishes like carbonara and cacio e pepe._
5. Relating to the Roman Catholic Church or to the Holy See.
   - Simple: Having to do with the Roman Catholic Church or with the pope's government in Rome.
   - _The parish celebrates Mass according to the Roman rite rather than an Eastern one._
   - _The council's decrees could not be published until the Roman authorities had approved them._
7. Belonging to an architectural style marked by large, bold round arches and vaults, and by baths, aqueducts, basilicas, amphitheaters, and similar buildings.
   - Simple: In a style of building with big, bold round arches and curved roofs, seen in baths and arenas.
   - _The station's Roman concourse, roofed with a vast barrel vault, was modeled on an ancient bathhouse._
   - _Unlike the pointed arches of Gothic churches, Roman arches are perfectly round._
11. Said before a number in speech to show that it is written as a Roman numeral rather than an Arabic one. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: Said before a number when speaking, to show it is written like IV, not like 4.
   - _Counsel, please turn to subsection Roman four on page twelve._
   - _The professor told the class to skip ahead to Roman two in the outline of the statute._
13. Having a dignified, noble face that shows little expression.
   - Simple: Having a proud, noble face that shows very little feeling.
   - _Through the whole sentencing he kept a Roman face, dignified and utterly unreadable._
   - _He stood before the committee looking quite Roman, noble and perfectly unmoved._
14. Belonging to, coming from, or relating to the Byzantine Empire.
   - Simple: From or belonging to the Byzantine Empire of long ago.
   - _Roman envoys from Constantinople arrived at the Bulgarian court bearing silk and gold._
   - _By the eleventh century the Roman army relied heavily on foreign mercenaries._

## Noun · Roman

3. A person born in or living in the Roman Empire.
   - Simple: A person who was born in or lived in the Roman Empire.
   - _A wealthy Roman often owned a house in town and a villa in the country._
   - _The Romans adopted many gods from the peoples they conquered._
4. A person born in Rome or living there.
   - Simple: A person who was born in Rome or lives there.
   - _Ask a Roman where to find the best carbonara and you'll get a long answer._
   - _Many Romans escape the city in August, when the heat is at its worst._
10. The Latin script, the alphabet in which English and many other languages are written.
   - Simple: The letters A to Z, the alphabet used to write English and many other languages.
   - _Many Hindi speakers text each other in Roman rather than Devanagari._
   - _The road signs give the town's name in Inuktitut syllabics and in Roman._
15. A person born in or living in the Byzantine Empire.
   - Simple: A person who lived in the Byzantine Empire long ago.
   - _Venetian merchants with special trading rights were bitterly resented by the Romans of Constantinople._
   - _A Roman living in eleventh-century Constantinople spoke Greek, not Latin._

## Adjective

6. Of text or characters, relating to the Latin alphabet or to roman numerals.
   - Simple: Using the letters A to Z of the Latin alphabet, or roman numerals like IV and X.
   - _The keyboard switches between Cyrillic and roman characters with a single key._
   - _Chapter headings use roman numbering, while the pages use ordinary digits._
8. Of type or a font: upright, rather than slanted as italic or oblique type is.
   - Simple: Printed with letters that stand straight up, not slanted like italic letters.
   - _Foreign words are set in italic, but loanwords as common as café stay roman._
   - _The editor switched the punctuation after the title back to roman type._

## Noun

9. One of the three main styles of type for the Latin alphabet, alongside italic and blackletter, in which the ascenders are mostly straight.
   - Simple: One of three main styles of printed letters, with the tall parts of b, d and h mostly straight.
   - _The type designer spent two years drawing a roman and a matching italic._
   - _The foundry's catalog offered a dozen romans but only two blackletters._
12. Short for roman numeral. — Ellipsis of roman numeral.
   - Simple: Short for roman numeral. A number written with letters, like IV or X.
   - _Front-matter pages are numbered in lowercase roman, and the main text starts again at 1._
   - _On the spines, each volume number is set as a roman, from I through XII._

## Noun · Roman

16. A member of the Roman Catholic Church. *(dated)*
   - Simple: A member of the Catholic Church.
   - _My aunt, a lifelong Roman, was scandalized when her son was married at city hall._
   - _There were only a handful of Romans in the regiment, and they heard Mass in a borrowed barn._

## Noun

17. A long work of prose fiction; a novel. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: A novel, which is a long made-up story told in a book.
   - _The roman ran to three volumes, and the circulating library would lend only one at a time._
   - _Before he turned to poetry, he published a slim roman about life in a river town._

## Other meanings

- (proper noun) A male first name of Latin origin, taken into English in recent times from other European languages.
- (proper noun) A family name.
- (noun) A single letter or other character set in Roman type.
- (proper noun) A Romanian city in the county of Neamț, in the northeast of the country.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–5, 7, 10–11, 13–16** — From Old French Romain, from Latin Rōmānus; in reference to the Byzantine Empire, via the Byzantine Greek name Ῥωμαῖος (Rhōmaîos). It can also be analyzed as Rome + -an, and is a doublet of Romano.
**Meanings 6, 8–9, 12** — From Roman ("of ancient Rome"), after the letters and numerals of the ancient Romans.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/roman (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).