Advocacy

How to spell advocacy

8 letters · 4 syllables

1 of the 35 people asked to spell advocacy in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

How to pronounce advocacy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does advocacy mean?

1. nounThe act of publicly supporting or arguing in favour of a cause, policy, or group.

Advocacy in a sentence

• Her years of advocacy for patients' rights changed hospital policy.

• The charity is known for its tireless advocacy on behalf of refugees.

Where does advocacy come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin advocare, which literally meant 'to call to one's aid' or 'to summon someone for support', built from ad 'to, toward' and vocare 'to call'. From this came advocatus, the term for a legal helper called in to plead a case, and that idea of pleading on someone's behalf has stayed at the heart of the word ever since. English took 'advocacy' through Old French in the late medieval period, originally meaning the function or office of an advocate before broadening into the general sense of actively supporting a cause. The same vocare root still echoes in everyday relatives such as 'voice', 'vocation', and 'vocal', all of which involve calling out or speaking. The spelling trap lies in that quiet middle: the -voc- root keeps a hard c, but the ending settles into the unstressed -acy rather than the -asy a writer might expect by ear.

How the word is built

• ad- (to, toward)
• voc (from vocare: to call)
• -acy (noun suffix: state or quality of)