• (RP) IPA: /ˈsɒv.ɹɪn/
• (GA) IPA: /ˈsɑv(ə)ɹɪn/

sovereign

1. Exercising power of rule.

   sovereign nation

2. Exceptional in quality.

   Her voice was her sovereign talent.

3. (now rare) Extremely potent or effective (of a medicine, remedy etc.).
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.v:

     The soueraigne weede betwixt two marbles plaine / She pownded small, and did in peeces bruze, / And then atweene her lilly handes twaine, / Into his wound the iuyce thereof did scruze […]

   • Dryden

     a sovereign remedy

   • South

     Such a sovereign influence has this passion upon the regulation of the lives and actions of men.

4. Having supreme, ultimate power.
5. Princely; royal.
   • c1610, Shakespeare, A Winters Tale, V.i:

     You pity not the state, nor the remembrance of his most sovereign name.

6. Predominant; greatest; utmost; paramount.
   • Hooker

     We acknowledge him [God] our sovereign good.

• autonomous
• supreme

• French: souverain
• German: souverän
• Italian: sovrano
• Portuguese: soberano
• Russian: сувере́нный
• Spanish: soberano

• Italian: eccezionale, supremo

sovereign (plural sovereigns)

1. A monarch; the ruler of a country.
   • 1594, William Shakespeare, Lvcrece (First Quarto)‎, London: Printed by Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […], OCLC 236076664 ↗:

     The petty ſtreames that paie a dailie debt#English|det / To their ſalt ſoveraigne with their freſh falls#English|fals haste#English|haſt, / Adde to his flowe, but alter not his taſt.

   • 1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗, lines 242-249:

     Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime, / Said then the lost Archangel, this the seat / That we must change for Heaven?, this mournful gloom / For that celestial light? Be it so, since hee / Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid / What shall be right : fardest from him is best / Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream / Above his equals. {{...}

   • No question is to be made but that the bed of the Mississippi belongs to the sovereign, that is, to the nation.

2. One who is not a subject to a ruler or nation.
3. A gold coin of the United Kingdom, with a nominal value of one pound sterling but in practice used as a bullion coin.
4. A very large champagne bottle with the capacity of about 25 liters, equivalent to 33⅓ standard bottles.
5. Any butterfly of the tribe Nymphalini, or genus Basilarchia, as the ursula and the viceroy.
6. (UK, slang) A large, garish ring; a sovereign ring.
   • 2004, December 11, "Birkenhead, Merseyside" BBC Voices recording ↗ (0:06:52)

     No, someone who wears loads of sovereigns as well loads of gold and has uh a curly perm and peroxide blonde hair, orange, orange sunbed skin and a fringe like this blow-dried to death, that’s a ‘scally’.

• French: souverain
• German: Souverän
• Italian: sovrano
• Portuguese: suserano, soberano, soberana
• Russian: сувере́н
• Spanish: soberano

• French: souverain
• Portuguese: soberano, soberana

• French: souverain
• Russian: со́верен

• French: souverain

sovereign (sovereigns, present participle sovereigning; past and past participle sovereigned)

1. (transitive) To rule over as a sovereign.