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paramount.

Highest, supreme; also, chief, leading, pre-eminent.

9 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈpæɹəmaʊnt/Received-Pronunciation/ˈpæɹəˌmaʊnt/General-American/ˈpɛɹəˌmaʊnt/
  1. Highest, supreme; also, chief, leading, pre-eminent.

    not-comparable · often · postpositional
  2. Of the highest importance.

    not-comparable
    Getting those credit cards paid off is paramount.
  3. Of a law, right, etc.: having precedence over or superior to another.

    not-comparable · obsolete
Where this word comes from

PIE word *h₂éd From Anglo-Norman paramont /paramount (“paramount, pre-eminent; above”), from Old French par /per (“by”) + amont /amunt (“upward”). Par is derived from Latin per (“by means of, through”), from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“to go through; to carry forth, fare”); amont and amunt are from Latin ad montem (“to the mountain; upward”), from ad (“up to”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂éd (“at; to”)) + montem (the accusative singular of mōns (“mount, mountain”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to stand out, tower”)).

noun/ˈpæɹəmaʊnt/Received-Pronunciation/ˈpæɹəˌmaʊnt/General-American/ˈpɛɹəˌmaʊnt/
  1. A chief or superior; (specifically, chiefly South Africa) an African chief having the highest status in a region; a paramount chief.

  2. A supreme ruler; an overlord; (specifically, historical) in the feudal system, a landowner who did not derive ownership of the land from anyone else, and who was able to grant fees to others; a lord paramount.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

PIE word *h₂éd From Anglo-Norman paramont /paramount (“paramount, pre-eminent; above”), from Old French par /per (“by”) + amont /amunt (“upward”). Par is derived from Latin per (“by means of, through”), from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“to go through; to carry forth, fare”); amont and amunt are from Latin ad montem (“to the mountain; upward”), from ad (“up to”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂éd (“at; to”)) + montem (the accusative singular of mōns (“mount, mountain”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to stand out, tower”)).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.