Act

How to spell act

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce act

What does act mean?

1. verbTo take action or behave in a particular way.
2. nounA thing that someone does; a deed.
3. nounA main division of a play, opera, or other staged performance.
4. nounA formal law passed by a legislative body.

Act in a sentence

• verb

  The manager decided to act quickly on the complaint.

• noun

  Returning the lost wallet was a kind act.

• noun

  The hero finally appears in the second act of the play.

• noun

  Parliament passed the new housing act last spring.

• verb

  He tends to act calmly under pressure.

• noun

  His single brave act saved the whole family.

Where does act come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin actus, meaning 'a doing' or 'a performance', and from actum, meaning 'a thing done', both built on the verb agere, which literally meant 'to drive, lead, or do'. English took it in during the late 1300s through Old French, first in the sense of a deed or something carried out. From there the meanings branched out in natural directions: a formal record of something done became a statute or 'act' of a governing body, and a portion of a staged drama became an 'act' of a play. The very same agere root sits inside a whole family of familiar words such as agent, action, agile, and agenda, all of them carrying the idea of getting something done. Because the spelling is short and entirely phonetic, it preserves the bare Latin stem with no silent letters to trip anyone up.

How the word is built

• act (from Latin actus: a doing, a performance)