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.
One of the few Turks in Karagümrük who socializes with the Syrians, he argues that the latter—devout Sunni Muslims who flock to the local mosques—are “our votes in the future.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 30, 2026
Though much of southern Lebanon is predominantly Shiite, Kfar Chouba and its neighbors comprise a pocket of Christian, Druze and Sunni Muslim communities.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 7, 2026
Why shouldn’t that work in the Middle East, even if he can’t distinguish Sunni from Shia and doesn’t understand the basic geography of the region?
From Salon • Mar. 14, 2026
About 10% of Shia-Muslim majority Iran's 84 million population are Kurds, who are mainly Sunni Muslims and live mostly in the country's north-western regions.
From BBC • Mar. 5, 2026
We visited Baghdad, the U.S. military headquarters in Fallujah, and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit encampment outside Babil, in the heart of Iraq’s so-called Sunni Triangle.
From "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman
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.
