Sunni
Americannoun
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Also called Sunnite. a member of one of the two great religious divisions of Islam, regarding the first four caliphs as legitimate successors of Muhammad and stressing the importance of Sunna as a basis for law.
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(used with a plural verb) the Sunni Muslims.
noun
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one of the two main branches of orthodox Islam (the other being the Shiah), consisting of those who acknowledge the authority of the Sunna
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another term for Sunnite
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of Sunni
1620–30; < Arabic sunnī, derivative of sunnah Sunna
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Al-Azhar, the Cairo-based institute of Sunni Islamic learning, also denounced the incident.
From Barron's ● Oct. 2, 2026
They include a disproportionately high number of Pakistan's minority Christians and Ahmadis in particular, but many majority Sunni Muslims too.
From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2026
Moreover, one reason for all the imagining from without is the paucity of figuration from within Sunni Islam.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 12, 2026
Turkey has championed Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Sunni jihadist whose rebels in late 2024 ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad, ending a brutal civil war.
From Barron's ● Aug. 19, 2026
But she learned that there were Shiite and Sunni interpretations of the Qur’an, and within any mosque there were the same variations in faith and commitment as there were in any church.
From "Zeitoun" by Dave Eggers
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
