n.
Pronunciation: -w ə nt, - ə nt
Function: noun
Etymology: French constituant, from Middle French, from present participle of constituer to constitute, from Latin constituere
Date: 1622
1 : one who authorizes another to act as agent : PRINCIPAL
2 : a member of a constituency
3 : an essential part : COMPONENT , ELEMENT
4 : a structural unit of a definable syntactic, semantic, or phonological category that consists of one or more linguistic elements (as words, morphemes, or features) and that can occur as a component of a larger construction
synonyms see ELEMENT