The Right Honourable

Not to be confused with The Honourable, The Most Honourable, or The Much Honoured.
This engraving of George Cornewall Lewis includes The Right Honourable in its caption, reflecting the Home Secretary position he held at the time of its creation.

The Right Honourable (abbreviation: The Rt Hon. or variations) is an honorific style traditionally applied to certain persons and collective bodies in the United Kingdom, the former British Empire and the Commonwealth of Nations. The term is predominantly used today as a style associated with the holding of certain senior public offices in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and, to a lesser extent, Australia.

Right in this context is an adverb meaning 'very' or 'fully'.[1] Grammatically, The Right Honourable is an adjectival phrase which gives information about a person.[2] As such, it is not considered correct to apply it in direct address, nor to use it on its own as a title in place of a name; but rather it is used in the third person along with a name or noun to be modified.[3][4][a]

Right may be abbreviated to Rt, and Honourable to Hon., or both. The is sometimes dropped in written abbreviated form, but is always pronounced.

  1. ^ "right". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. March 2022. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  2. ^ "Right Honourable". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. March 2022. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  3. ^ Montague-Smith (1979), pp. 33–35, 80–82.
  4. ^ Hickey (2013), pp. 365–372, 378–379, 396–402.


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