Accomplishment

How to spell accomplishment

14 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce accomplishment

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does accomplishment mean?

1. nounSomething completed successfully, often through effort or skill; an achievement.

Accomplishment in a sentence

• Finishing the marathon was a genuine accomplishment for someone who had never run before.

• The team listed every major accomplishment from the past year in the report.

Where does accomplishment come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin verb complere, which literally meant 'to fill up' or 'to make full', built from the intensifying prefix com- and plere, 'to fill'. In Late Latin this idea of filling something up shifted naturally toward the sense of finishing or completing a task. The verb passed into Old French as acomplir, carrying the meaning 'to carry out fully', and Middle English borrowed it in the 1400s as 'accomplish'. The abstract noun 'accomplishment', meaning the act of completing or a thing achieved, followed soon after, and by the eighteenth century it had also taken on the polite sense of a refined personal skill. The same Latin plere lies behind 'complete', 'replete' and 'plenty', which is a useful reminder that the spelling carries a doubled c in 'ac-com' but only a single c after it, the trap that catches many adult writers.

How the word is built

• ac- (to, from Latin ad-)
• com- (together, intensifier)
• plish (from Latin plere/complere: to fill, complete)
• -ment (noun suffix)