interregnum means A period of time between the end of one monarch's reign and the accession of their successor. It carries an Arena rating of 1884, earned across 39 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, interregnum ranks #224 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words, #1,090 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #1,505 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #1,942 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words.
interregnum is pronounced /ɪntəˈɹɛɡnəm/.
Why “interregnum” is a great word
INTERREGNUM — [Noun] A period of discontinuity or suspension of normal government, especially between successive reigns or regimes. From Latin interrēgnum, from inter- ("between") + rēgnum ("reign, royal power"). First attested in English in the 1580s. Unlike an "intermission" (a scheduled pause within an ongoing event) or a "hiatus" (a general gap in any series), an interregnum is a formal vacuum of sovereign authority. It is the silent throne room, the unsealed state seal, and the populace scanning the horizon for a sail—a silence in the machinery of state that amplifies every whisper of what might come next.
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin interrēgnum, from inter- (prefix meaning ‘between’) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁entér (“between”)) + rēgnum (“reign; royal power”) (nominalized from the neuter of *rēgnus, from rēx (“king; ruler”, oblique stem rēg-) + -nus (suffix forming adjectives), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃reǵ- (“to righten; to straighten”)). The plural form interregna is a learned borrowing from Latin interrēgna.
noun
- A period of time between the end of one monarch's reign and the accession of their successor.e.g.“The Sasanian Interregnum of 628–632”
- A break in continuity; a gap, an intermission.
- A period of time between when a minister or pastor leaves a church and when a new one is installed.
- A period of time between the end of one political leader's term and the start of the term of their successor; a period of time during which normal executive leadership is interrupted or suspended, and a polity is either left without leadership or has only a temporary one.e.g.“Darker questions still emerge in these dusky final weeks of our interregnum.” — 2025 January 10, Peter Thiel, “A time for truth and reconciliation”, in Financial Times:
- A temporary exercise of authority or rule during a period of time when there is no monarch or political leader.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.