Montague

M3O1N1T1A1G2U1E1
UK/ˈmɒntəɡjuː/

proper noun

A surname from Old French, variant of Montagu.

Less commonScrabble 11

Meanings

proper nounMontague (countable and uncountable, plural Montagues)

plural Montagues

  1. countableuncountableA surname from Old French, variant of Montagu.
  2. countableuncountableA male given name.
  3. countablefigurativelyuncountableBy analogy with the Shakespearean play, a member or citizen of the family, party, or country of the husband in a Romeo and Juliet couple and/or of a group that is feuding with another, similar group identified as Capulet.

    She playfully called herself a tragedienne, much like Juliet Capulet, and she thought of Timmy as her Romeo Montague.

    2004, Scott Casper, Cardinal Sin: Tales of Alaska, War, and More, page 161
    5 more examples

    It goes without saying that she knew nothing whatever of the bad relations subsisting between her father and her sweetheart. She did not know her Romeo was a Montague still less that to him she was a Capulet.

    1913, Annabella Bruce Marchand, Dirk, a South African, page 198

    For seven years she and her father, and her father-in-law, remained estranged, till old Santa-Pia Capulet lay on his death bed, still adamant in his political convictions, recalcitrant against the orders of the state (on emancipation), and unrelenting toward his daughter, the dead Romeo, and old Montague; and so he died, with only a vague gesture of forgiveness toward Fidelia, though Campos (Prince Escalus) had been trying all the while to bring about a reconciliation.

    1960, Helen Caldwell, The Braziliam Othello of Machado de Assis: A study of Dom Casmurro, page 124

    Still, despite Marshall's impression of a kind of Montague-Capulet feud, George Catlett did succeed in marrying Laura Emily, the daughter of Dr. Jonathan Bradford, and his sister, Margaret, married Laura's brother, Thomas.

    1963, Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Education of a general, 1880-1939, page 8

    Romeo's mother was precisely what I had painted her — a Lady Montague of the severest, with coffee-coloured point-lace, a Cornelia one shade too stout for the mother of the Gracchi.

    2003, Grant Allen, Clarissa Suranyi, The Type-Writer Girl, page 104

    That said, Capulet's skepticism has a sound rationale. She needs only one kind of thing, caloric fluid, to explain the movement and behavior of heat. Montague has posited two kinds of things, heat itself and heat radiation, each popping up to do the job it is good for and then conveniently metamorphosing into the other when that's what's needed instead.

    2020, Michael Strevens, The Knowledge Machine
  4. A place in the United States:
    1. countableuncountableA city in Siskiyou County, California.
    2. countableuncountableA town in Franklin County, Massachusetts.
    3. countableuncountableA city in Michigan.
    4. countableuncountableA town in New York.
  5. countableuncountableA township in Ontario.
  6. countableuncountableA community in Prince Edward Island.

Rhymes & wordplay

Anagrams

Cite this entry
APA

Montague. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Montague

MLA

“Montague.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Montague. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Montague,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Montague.

Source: Montague on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.