Activate

How to spell activate

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce activate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does activate mean?

1. verbTo make something start working, operating, or become effective.

Activate in a sentence

• Press the green button to activate the alarm system before you leave.

• You must activate the new card online before your first purchase.

Where does activate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word activate is built on the Latin actus, meaning 'a doing' or 'a thing done', which itself comes from the verb agere, 'to drive, to do, or to set in motion'. From that root English already had 'active', describing something full of action, and 'activate' was formed by adding the verb-making ending -ate to mean 'to make active'. The term is comparatively modern, appearing in English around the early seventeenth century and gaining a much wider scientific and technical life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, used for switching machines on, triggering chemical reactions, and rousing cells or substances into action. The same agere root branches out into a surprisingly large family, including 'agent', 'agile', 'agenda', and 'react', all carrying that core idea of motion or doing. For spelling, it helps to see the tidy chain act + ive + ate, so the single c and single t never tempt you toward doubling.

How the word is built

• act (from Latin actus: a doing)
• -ive (tending to)
• -ate (verb suffix: to make or cause)