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How to spell advertisement

13 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce advertisement

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does advertisement mean?

1. nounA paid public notice promoting a product, service, event, or vacancy.

Advertisement in a sentence

• The company placed a full-page advertisement in the weekend newspaper.

• She answered an advertisement for a part-time accounting role.

Where does advertisement come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb advertere, meaning 'to turn toward', formed from ad ('to' or 'toward') and vertere ('to turn'); the same vertere gives us 'convert', 'reverse', and 'version'. In medieval Latin advertere developed a sense of 'to turn one's attention to', and from this came the idea of drawing attention to something. English picked the word up through Old French avertir and avertissement during the 1400s, when 'advertisement' simply meant a notice or a warning that turned the public's attention to a fact. Only later, as printed notices and newspapers spread in the 1600s and 1700s, did it narrow to the modern commercial sense of a paid public announcement. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the 'tise' is unstressed in many accents and the 'd' after 'a' is easy to drop, yet remembering the buried verb 'advertise' keeps both letters in place.

How the word is built

• ad- (toward)
• vert (turn, from Latin vertere)
• -ise (verb suffix)
• -ment (noun suffix)