Activities

How to spell activities

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce activities

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does activities mean?

1. nounThings that people do, especially for a particular purpose, interest, or occasion.

Activities in a sentence

• The resort offers a full range of outdoor activities for guests.

• The manager logged all team activities in a weekly report.

Where does activities come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The base of this word reaches back to the Latin verb agere, which literally meant 'to do, to drive, or to set in motion'; its past participle actus gave rise to the adjective activus, meaning 'practical' or 'busy with doing'. From activus came the medieval Latin noun activitas, describing the quality or state of being active. English took the word in through Old French activite during the late Middle Ages, and the singular 'activity' had settled into use by the 1400s. The same agere root powers a whole family of familiar relatives, including 'act', 'agent', 'agitate', and 'action', all of which share the idea of doing or driving something forward. The plural 'activities' simply follows the regular English rule of changing a final -y to -ies, which is the small spelling step writers must remember rather than adding a plain -s.

How the word is built

• act (from Latin agere: to do, drive)
• -ive (forming an adjective)
• -ity (forming a noun of state)
• -es (plural)