Address

How to spell address

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce address

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does address mean?

1. nounThe details of where a person lives or where mail should be delivered.
2. verbTo deal with, attend to, or direct attention toward a matter.
3. verbTo speak formally to a person or group.
4. nounA formal speech delivered to an audience.

Address in a sentence

• noun

  The parcel never arrived because the address was written incorrectly.

• verb

  The committee will address the budget shortfall at its next meeting.

• verb

  The chief executive will address the entire workforce on Monday morning.

• noun

  The president's annual address lasted nearly an hour.

• noun

  She updated her billing address before placing the online order.

• verb

  Managers must address staff complaints quickly to keep morale high.

Where does address come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin directus, the past participle of dirigere meaning 'to set straight' or 'to direct', built from dis- 'apart' and regere 'to guide or rule'. This passed into Old French as adrecier, meaning 'to set right' or 'to direct toward something', and English borrowed it in the late 1300s with the sense of aiming or directing oneself toward a task or a person. From that core idea of directing came the modern verb sense of speaking formally to an audience, since one literally directs words at listeners, and the sense of writing a destination on a letter, since one directs the letter to a place. The noun meaning a person's residence grew out of that postal sense, as the place to which mail is directed. The doubled letters are the classic trap: there are two of them, the d and the s, both inherited from the ad- prefix meeting the dr root and the French spelling, so the safest memory hook is that address carries a double dose of consonants.

How the word is built

• ad- (to, toward)
• dress (from Latin directus 'made straight, directed')